Into Each Life, Some Rain Must Fall
by Deirdre Jubilee
Summary: The age old story of a socially-awkward, chubby Asian girl leaving her post-apocalyptic nuclear safehouse to tell her father he's an idiot.
1. Chapter 1

James Fitzgerald paced frantically in front of a small brown hill. It was the middle of the night, and the moon hung heavy and yellow over the Capital Wasteland - casting a jaundiced glow over the emaciated junkies and the high-nosed paladins alike. One such paladin leaned against a rocky outcropping behind him, calmly smoking a cigarette with one hand and rocking a dirty bundle of rags in the other. They were waiting for some unknown sign - a smoke signal perhaps or the cry of some long extinct bird.

"One thing I've noticed," The paladin stared up at the moon, letting the fumes of her cigarette mix with the marginally more healthy air around her, "is that you scientists are always so antsy. It's only half-past right now. You've got another five, ten minutes."

James' eyes flickered to her for a moment, giving her a glimpse of how red they were, but he didn't break his stride. He mumbled something under his breath that she couldn't hear and then fell silent once more. This wasn't the time for small talk or any manner of communication at all.

All that mattered was that _signal_.

When it happened, they were both caught by surprise - the paladin less so than the scientist. It was imperceptible at first. There was a little scraping sound, a little squeak of unused metal on metal. Then, the wooden door on the face of the hill began to rattle in its rusty metal hinges, and the ground outside began to shake a bit as well, like the faintest side effects of some far off Rapture. The sounds got louder, and the rumbling grew harder until a chorus of cherubic sirens and alarms joined the orchestra of squealing steel. It grew to a crescendo, rushing towards that impossible final chord. By this time, both the paladin and the scientist had rushed through the door and into the stony tunnel within - almost floored by the incredible symphony of sound. The rags in the paladin's arms began to wiggle and shake, a reedy wail acting as lead soprano.

The pearly steel gates of heaven opened before their eyes, and the fiery harshness of the light behind them lit up the tunnel like the pre-war Sun. The paladin's cigarette lay forgotten on the ground, a single burning sin extinguished by this unearthly light. Four angels in blue were silhouetted, unknowable.

One of the angels stepped forward and said, suppressing an obvious yawn while still trying to sound authoritative, "James Fitzgerald and Micah Fitzgerald, you are hereby welcomed into Vault 101."

* * *

Micah Fitzgerald was always known as an odd child about the Vault. The adults would talk of her in whispers, and the children were told to distance themselves. It wasn't like she was all that physically different from the rest of the Vault - being a rather chubby, near-sighted girl of South Asian descent. It wasn't that she routinely knew the answers to all of Mr. Brotch's tests, although that certainly didn't help her case. For all of her technological know-how, Micah could never quite figure out why she was considered so strange. To be honest, she never really cared. She had one good friend - Amata - and that's all that really mattered when it came to social issues. However, on the morning of April 22nd, 2266, she came to realize its importance.

It had been in the Vault Atrium, a multi-purpose recreation area where most of the younger citizens spent their time. This was the first time Micah had been allowed to join, having previously been kept in her father's apartment during the day, and she was excited. She bounced, up and down, up and down, her chubby little cheeks red from all the anticipation. What would the other kids be like outside of class? Would she make new friends? Would Freddie share that gum he kept in his back pocket during class with her?

The other kids were playing baseball without her, but she was sure that it was just a matter of time before they realized they had forgotten her and enthusiastically invited her to be shortstop or something. Then, they would all drink Grandma Palmer's lemonade and laugh and laugh and laugh. Everything would be forgotten, like the time when Paul stole her note holotapes, or when Susie made oinking noises when she ate, or when Wally gave her a dead arm, or-

This optimistic train of thought was quickly interrupted by someone shoving her into the wall, knocking her glasses off with such force that they hurtled into the air and shattered against the cold steel floor. A sharp blast of pain ripped and zipped up Micah's back, making her ache as she struggled to stand up and face her assailant. For a moment, she wondered who could have done such a thing, but the next few seconds wiped all doubt from her mind.

"Oops! Look like the four-eyed fatty got in the way _again_!"

Of course it was Butch. It was always Butch, and even though Micah's father always told her to not give him the satisfaction of an emotional response, she wanted to curl up into a little ball. Thin streams of tears streaked down both sides of her face. Before she could truly finish feeling sorry for herself, a hand pulled her up by her suit's collar and then threw her down again. She cried harder, to the point where her sobs no longer made a sound and they came out as choking, desperate gasps.

"Aw! Looks like the Vault baby's crying!" Butch jeered at her, bathing in the apparent approval of the half-circle of kids that circled nervously around them. He spat in Micah's hair, and her breathing grew faster - reaching a fever pitch. She was hyperventilating.

Micah raised up a hand, a silent plea for help for someone, anyone to realize what was happening to her. Her head began to pound violently, and her chest hurt like she had just run the annual Vault marathon. Paul seemed to understand what was happening first and he sprinted out of the room. Most of the others followed suit. Even Butch seemed a little concerned - for his safety or her own, it wasn't clear, even to him.

The last thing Micah heard before she completely passed out was him running to get her father from the med bay.

* * *

Micah carried around a paper bag with her at all times for eight years, at her father's insistence. The other kids made jokes about it being her second lunch, but they never seemed to truly forget what happened that day in the Atrium.

She poured all of her emotion and dedication into tinkering with anything she could get her hands on. Nothing was safe from her technical eye and attention to the finest detail : broken food processors, burnt-out computer motherboards, fading terminals. She trailed Stanley Armstrong like a second shadow, learning everything she could about the machinery in the Vault. Her father even put an extra cot down in Jonas' lab because she was spending so much time asking him questions about the Vault's life support systems and power supply.

By the time she was nine and a half, she successfully hacked into her first terminal system. It was just the Vault menu, but it was exciting - the kind of exciting that others found in sports or in love.

For the most part, Micah remained in her room, developing a sickly complexion from the glow of her personal terminal. She refused to leave her desk on the weekends, unless it was to pick up some new scrap material or because Amata drug her out kicking and screaming. For the most part, she was content and the years passed without much incident. Her 10th birthday party was a bust, but she had gotten a Pip-Boy out of the deal which expanded her technological capabilities almost ten fold. It wasn't until she was thirteen that she even held the barest minimum of a conversation with anyone who wasn't either a scientist or Amata.

* * *

In the spring of 2271, Micah faced a problem she couldn't solve with either indifference or intellectual know-how: teenage hormones. She, of course, knew about those insidious little beasts. They caused all sorts of chemical imbalances which resulted in feelings and, as her father tried to awkwardly teach her, menstruation. She was mostly worried about the emotional side of things, though.

That spring, something turned on a little switch in her brain. She was suddenly affected by her peers' approval again. Suddenly, Paul Hannon was looking pretty cute and not like the kid who willingly ganged up on her with Wally and Butch. Suddenly, he had to wear a bra under her vault suit. Suddenly, she began to realize that everything adults ever did was completely and utterly wrong. Suddenly, she became a teenager - the stuff of nightmares.

One day while walking back to the living quarters with Amata, Micah noticed - a rather astonishing feat - that someone else was nearby, someone that was decidedly _not_ Butch or his gang.

"Do you hear that?" Micah blocked her friend's path with an outstretched arm.

Amata shrugged and said, "It's probably just the air filtration system or the pipes or something."

Micah shook her head and peeked around the corner. No one there. She looked up at the ceiling.

No one there either.

"Look," her friend said gently as if practiced several times, "you're just a little bit nervous about the G.O.A.T. prep test we're taking tomorrow. You're just a little on edge, okay?"

She shook her head again and half-shuffled, half-waddled to the end of the hallway and the darkened supply closet's door frame, suddenly turning on her Pip-Boy light on its brightest setting. The resulting flash of light revealed a lanky, greasy boy hiding in the shadows. Amata jumped a little when the boy gave a terrified yelp. It was Freaky Fred Gomez, scourge of their class and just slightly higher on the veritable totem pole than Micah and Amata.

"Okay! Okay!" He shouted, voice cracking harshly, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Just don't hurt me! I didn't mean to make so much noise!"

Micah flipped off her Pip-Boy light and turned on the closet's switch. She adjusted her glasses and gave a little look inside. The closet was a Grognak the Barbarian _gold mine_. She gave an audible gasp.

Amata scurried up and saw it too, her jaw almost dropping so low she'd have to go to the med bay.

"He's got every issue from 'Heart of the Dragon King' to 'Sword of Sovngarde'!" Micah squealed, elbowing past the crumpled boy to look more at the neatly organized comic books, "He's even got Issue # 28!"

"The one with Grognak's evil twin coming back from the dead and wreaking havoc on Eternia?!" Amata shoved past Freddie as well, almost knocking him over in her rush to examine at such precious treasure.

After a few more minutes of gratuitous fangirling, Freddie gave a cough to alert them to his presence. They turned to him like greedy vultures, their eyes shining with the religious fervor of a man on his death bed. He promptly regretted his decision.

"Where did you _get_ all of these?!" Micah nearly burst out into maniacal giggles as she leafed through Issue # 7, "They even have most of the pages! This is the greatest thing I've ever _seen_!"

He blushed a bit and muttered, "Whenever my dad confiscates them, he makes sure that if he finds an issue I don't have, he gives it to me."

Micahs's glee seemed to dull a bit as she said, "So, Officer Gomez takes our comics and gives them to _you_?"

He paled a bit, and whispered, "Just whenever he can..."

Amata set down her stack of comics in her arms and offered Freddie a hand up, which he gladly took. She gave him a toothy grin, which made his face completely red.

"So, Freddie, you wanna walk home with us?"


	2. Chapter 2

For a woman with an infant daughter back home, Albina Almodovar was a good lay, if the frequency of her "supply runs" to the nearest utility closet were any indication.

Alphonse is a lucky man, James though as he zipped up his Vault suit in one such utility closet, right off of the Atrium. It was more than a bit tight on him – probably because it was usually issued to stick-thin, teenage boys – but it was all he could get until his requisition forms went through sometime just after Hell freezes over.

He felt hot breath on his neck and soft arms around his waist. For a split-second, James could only imagine.

"Catherine," he whispered before catching his mistake and feeling a sharp pain in his heart.

The woman behind him didn't seem to notice or, if she did, care. She flicked her devilishly skilled tongue across the base of his neck; her sweat soaked hair brushed against him as she moved on to his Adam's Apple and began to suck.

James flinched away from her touch and broke her tight embrace in one jerky movement. The last thing that they needed was any sort of lasting evidence – either to alert the Overseer or to remind James later of this debauched affair.

He began to zip up his jumpsuit again but his partner in crime apparently had other plans, as she let out an offended squawk and spun him around with surprising strength. Even with her small frame, it seemed as though they were face-to-face. Her dark eyes were clouded with lust, rapidly retreating with the coming storm of rage and scorn. Her bottom lip quivered, hands balled up into fists at her sides. James realized for the first just how young she was.

He knew from hushed gossip that it had been quite the scandal when she had married the Overseer, a man almost fifteen years her elder. She had been barely old enough for her first impregnation cycle, when his predecessor used the Auto-Doc to impregnate all female vault dwellers of childbearing age to ensure genetic purity and optimal gene inheritance. He looked at her puffed-up cheeks and narrowed eyes and felt like he had been robbing the cradle.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing?!" She screeched, closing the short distance between them with a stomp, "I could fucking end you, newbie! I could fucking tell my husband how you fucking raped me, that you took advantage of me! I could tell him anything! So, when I want to fucking fuck, you will fucking fuck me!"

Impressed by both her lung capacity and her surprisingly vulgar vocabulary, James was left wide open for her right hook colliding into the side of his face. The back of his head slammed into the utility closet wall, wobbling boxes of Abraxo Cleaner and recently used tubs of floor wax. The woman, apparently ready to report his behavior to the playground minder, punched the door control and sprinted out into the Atrium.

Still dazed from Ms. Almodovar's assault, James could only listen as he heard her scream – punctuated by a loud thud. He at least had the sense of mind to finish zipping up his jumpsuit before passing out.

* * *

Vault Security officers paced the first floor of the Atrium nervously, unwilling to make contact with the Overseer. They had all been woken up in the middle of night by a medical distress signal, and they feared the worst when the Overseer – usually cool and composed – promptly ejected one man from the force for showing up five minutes late.

The corpse of the Overseer's beautiful young wife lay sprawled in the middle of the floor. She had apparently gone quite a distance, as she left skid marks of blood and brain matter behind her. Her arms were shattered from a feeble attempt to protect her face. Her skull had cracked open like a rotten egg, and no one was willing to turn her over to see what the rest of her body looked like.

Tomorrow there would be questioning, tribunals, witch-hunting. But now, there was only a cold silence. The Overseer's wife had apparently been murdered, and the Overseer already had a prime suspect in mind.

"Bring me Dr. Fitzgerald, Officer Mack."

* * *

Micah cracked open the shell of the terminal, exposing the mechanical innards that lay beneath. It probably voided the warranty, but – to be fair – the company that originally made it was almost certainly buried in nuclear fallout. She eyed the naked electrical wiring with a manic glee. She had been preparing for this for the past two years, when she had first turned fourteen and received her very own personal terminal as a birthday present. The moment was upon her.

Quickly, Micah got to work and silently hoped that this terminal worked the same as the dummy ones she had rescued from the Maintenance department. It would be a real downer if she ended up getting electrocuted, or triggering the Vault security firewall, or had her dad walk in to send her on one of those stupid "target practice" trips with her barely touched BB gun.

After connecting all of the right wires and using her illegally "borrowed" hand torch to solder off any and all connections to the main security chip, she carefully replaced the outer shell of the terminal and reconnected the power. As it cast a sickly green wave of light on her, Micah got hopeful – she hadn't accidentally disconnected any of the display or power cables. When the menu popped up, she knew she had got it!

With reverence and ritual, she slowly began to type out her program, gaining speed in a religious fever. The simple lines of code she wrote on a piece of hidden paper were finally coming to life! Soon, she would be technologically free! Soon, she would be as powerful as the Overseer! Soon, life in the Vault would change.

* * *

Micah was absorbed in her latest project, leaving the remains of Fancy Lads Snack Cakes and YumYum Deviled Eggs strewn about her room and caked on her face. She hadn't been out of her apartment in three days, and she stunk like shit stuffed in a vault suit. But it was worth it, worth it to know that her work would pay off soon.

Soon.

Micah hadn't seen her father in a few days either, but she wasn't concerned about him. He often worked long hours in the clinic - or so he said - and it provided a perfect excuse not to go to Mr. Brotch's class. A few taps on the terminal's keyboard here, a holotape recording of her father there, and presto! Instant truancy, just add one overweight and sweaty nerdy girl working on a homebrewed operating system. It was all so simple, almost too simple. Sometimes she worried about what Amata would think if she knew that she was throwing her under the social bus, but Micah suspected that she already knew. All she could hope was that her FATHER didn't know. The last thing she needed was for the Overseer to suddenly care about whether or not she went to class and come around for a surprise inspection. That'd blow the plan and probably get her under arrest - or worse.

The code seemed to fly out of her fingers and onto the screen, every line adding something to the bigger puzzle. It was all perfectly recorded on her Pip-Boy anyways, so it was just a simple copying job. Not that she'd need to copy ANYTHING off of her Pip-Boy ever again after she was done. Yes, the Vault was about to change, Micah decided as she scarfed down another box of Dandy Boy Apples and threw the box into the recycler.

How right she was.

* * *

James was lucky enough to get a fair distance away before the Vault Security Officers dragged him to the Overseer's office. They were strangely quiet, but characteristically brutal - beating him with their billy clubs at the slightest break in pace. The Overseer's wife, he suspected, had done something. Or something had been done to her.

He was all but kicked into the office, and he fell on the floor in front of the Overseer's desk.

"Take a seat, James," Alphonse was turned away from him, no doubt trying to play up the drama of the moment, the little bastard.

James got back on his feet gingerly - there would definitely be bruises tomorrow and bleeding tonight - and sat in an uncomfortably molded steel chair. He felt like a child sitting before his cruel and unforgiving schoolmaster, all butterflies and guilt. He would have to play this right or else the guards - or even the Overseer himself - would play the xylophone with his ribs. He could only hope that they'd give Micah a swift death - she was only an infant, after all.

He had to compose himself, get this right. He focused on a rusty spot of steel above the Overseer's head before he spoke. God, he hoped that his voice wouldn't squeak.

"Good evening, my Overseer." James's mouth felt like it was full of sawdust, "How might I serve you?"

The Overseer didn't turn, didn't even flinch. He gave a signal with his hand, and the guards by the door slammed it shut. No escape.

"As you might have heard, Dr. Fitzgerald," he said coolly, voice like tempered steel, "There was an...incident earlier tonight. You did not respond to your emergency pager."

An incident? That would certainly explain the noise he heard outside of the utility closet.

"Please excuse my incompetence." Every word James said was oily, and he was going to slip on them, "I was in my apartment at the time of the...incident and was only able to get so far before Vault Security so kindly brought me to you, my Overseer."

It took a minute for Alphonse to respond, and James took to looking at all the items in the room to ease his nervousness - pencils, pens, papers, a beautiful picture of he and his wife... That last one almost broke his composure. They both looked so happy. He'd never seen Albina smile in the presence of her husband but he suspected that there used to be a time when they were as happy as a couple could be in an underground rat maze...

"Vault Security footage tells me another story, doctor." This broke James out of his reverie and into a cold sweat, "The tapes clearly show that you were NOT in your apartment at the time of the incident. Now, please tell me your alibi once more while the good Mr. Mack here," Officer Mack nodded at mention of his name and cocked his gun, "holds his 10 millimeter to the back of your head."

No amount of bullshit could save him now. This was the end.

Unless...

"You've caught me, my illustrious Overseer," James kept his voice even and smooth, still staring at the spot of rust above the Overseer's head, "I was not in my apartment. I was in my clinic - in the surgical room - preparing for a...concerned Vault Dweller."

This was plausible, he thought. There weren't any security cameras in the surgical room, and he HAD managed to avoid the ones along the way - as far as he knew. The only problem was who would take the role of the "concerned Vault Dweller" and the blame...

"Really now," The Overseer finally turned to face him, and James looked down to see that his teeth were tightly clenched and his eyes were puffy, "Who was this patient of yours who was so 'concerned' that they had to visit you in the middle of the night and without my permission?"

A list of names ran through James's head : DeLoria, Johnson, Gomez. But the best option would be the most obvious.

"It was Mr. DeLoria, sir. I'm sure that you know of his...indiscretion in his alcoholic habits. He came to me for a hangover cure. I felt sorry for the man, so I gave him the cure in the surgical room so there wouldn't be any evidence that his wife could pick up on - seeing as how she is...rather close with some of the wives of the security officers. He left shortly before the incident."

That was good. DeLoria was a miscreant, a booze-hound. Plus, he had a history with Albina Almodovar - they had dated as teenagers, and DeLoria had made several thinly-veiled passes at her. No doubt he had been fooling around with her too, and he was considerably less discreet about it than James was. It was certainly possible, and the Overseer knew it.

"And how was Mr. DeLoria's...condition after the procedure? Did he mention anything or anyone? Did he seem like there was somewhere he wanted to be?"

The Overseer had turned back around, apparently believing him enough to consider another series of events. It was game time. Time to save his skin and damn another man.

"He mentioned something about the Atrium, my Overseer." James's lies came easily to him which was a little disconcerting for the good doctor, "He also said that he was going to find his 'secret stash' that his wife didn't know about. I assumed that that meant liquor of some kind. He also mentioned that someone was waiting for him there, but I thought that person might have been a drinking buddy of his. He also mentioned that he, and I quote, 'wasn't going to show up on those damn cameras'. He said that he had his 'ways' to keep his wife from knowing about his drinking problem."

Excellent. DeLoria had been caught before escaping the cameras, and it WAS possible to avoid them - as James demonstrated. There was absolutely no reason to doubt his story. Who would you rather believe - the kindly doctor or the drunkard who had been infamously hitting on your wife only a few days prior?

"You may leave now, Dr. Fitzgerald," Alphonse waved his hand again and had the guards open the door again, who promptly jerked James out of the chair by his suit's collar, "But be advised: if anything of this...nature occurs again, see to it that you'll be at the head of the pack coming to my aid. For your actions today, you are to be put on half rations for the next three months, and you are no longer allowed to conduct any procedures in your clinic without the immediate supervision of an appointed Vault Security Guard."

James could only nod dumbly, confused at how well his fabricated story fooled the Overseer. With luck, DeLoria wouldn't be able to refute his claim. Knowing him, he WOULD actually be stone-cold drunk and unable to give a statement. As James was dragged back to his room, he hoped that a natural born citizen of the Vault would get off easier than his sorry wasteland behind. He hoped.

* * *

Alphonse reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a half empty bottle of scotch. It was his emergency supply, and it was running low these days. He took a swig right out of the bottle and sat it on the top of his desk. As much as he would like to drown his sorrows, alcohol wouldn't help him with what lay ahead - explaining to his young daughter that her mommy wouldn't ever be coming home.

Years of training to be the supreme and unfeeling head of the Vault suddenly broke down, and the Overseer began to openly weep. His beautiful wife was dead, his daughter would grow up without a mother.

Now, the question was who did it? This pulled him out of wallowing in self-pity for a moment as hot, blazing rage overtook him. Did he believe that damn doctor's story? Not for a second. But there was no one to take over his role. Jonas, while skilled, couldn't possibly provide the entire Vault without the proper training that Dr. Fitzgerald had. And it wasn't hard to admit that DeLoria was a good person to pin the whole debacle on. He was hated by his fellow Vault Dwellers and had no other redeeming qualities other than the fact that he was a natural born Vault Dweller - he worked as a glorified garbage man for Christ's sake! As much as he hated to admit it, the doctor had played his cards well, and the Overseer's duty was to the Vault - not himself.

Alphonse took a long drink from the bottle of scotch and stared longingly at the picture on his desk. How could that beautiful angel have ever sullied herself with such lowlifes? She had a God for a husband and yet she consorted the damned instead. She had truly fallen. But enough of the religious metaphors. Albina was a wonderful woman and now she was gone.

It was time to focus on Amata. This time, she would not fall. Not at any cost.

* * *

"I can't believe you skipped class for five days!" Amata shrieked shrilly as she and Micah walked side-by-side down the hall, "You came to my fourteenth birthday party last month, and I let you have the first slice of cake! The first slice! Do you KNOW what that means?! That means you let me ditch class WITH you!"

Amata gave her friend a harsh, but playful, shove, and she noticed the rancid smell from Micah for the first time. What was she doing for three days - hanging out in the Waste Management Center? It was like a pile of Radroaches all vomited at once.

"DAMN, MICAH!"

Micah, who had kept her head down demurely the entire time, looked up at her friend blearily and smiled. She wore the stench like a badge of pride. Her work was finally complete, and she couldn't care less about what other people thought of her. It was like being on top of a very smelly mountain top.

The Overseer's daughter gagged, burying her nose in her vault suit in disgust. What had gotten into Micah, she didn't know, but it certainly wasn't worth catching. After getting a whiff of this at least, Butch would forget all about how she cut the cheese on accident in the middle of Vault Studies yesterday.

None of this mattered to Micah any more. The fact that Susie would pick on her, the fact that Butch would beat her up later, the fact that she hadn't studied for the big test today at all. Those were all such childish, human concerns. Micah felt godly, and it would take a big shock to her pedestal to bring her down.

That shock came in the form of a gangly fourteen-year-old boy by the name of Freddie Gomez, who happened to be skulking around the clinic the previous night and came upon the two friends ready and willing to share what he had learned.

"Look, Amata, Micah," he said conspiratorially, lowering his voice and shifting his eyes back and forth, "I saw something last night and," he caught a whiff of Micah, "Whoa! Is the recycler broken in your apartment or something, Micah? You smell like rotting garbage! Anyways, it's about you - your father, really."

This piqued Micah's interest. Her father? Would this explain what he had been doing the past five days?

Noticing her interest, Freddie continued, "Yeah, yeah. I mean, I saw him with some of the old holotapes that my dad confiscated years ago. They're about," he whispered this part and pointed up reverently, "Up there. Like about water and grass and stuff. I don't know what he was doing with them but I'm sure that it's going to get him arrested if...uhh..." he looked awkwardly at Amata, blushing slightly, "the Overseer finds out. Not that you'd TELL him, Amata. I trust you and all..."

This wasn't what Micah wanted to hear.

"So what?" She said, flicking off a piece of snack cake that was still stuck to her vault suit, "My dad's got a bunch of old holotapes about how life used to be before the war. Whatever. We do the same thing in Brotch's class, and I don't see anyone making a fuss about it."

Amata, however, seemed to be a little brighter than her best friend that day and countered, "Don't you get it, Micah? These aren't the kind of tapes we listen to in class, not if they've been confiscated and your dad has to hide them. They've got to be important somehow."

Micah wasn't the least bit surprised that her father was doing something under the nose of Vault Security. She knew that her father was performing SOME kind of extra experiments or something, considering how much he'd been gone since, well, she was born. However, these tapes were a LITTLE interesting, she would give Freddie that. Micah had just assumed that her father had been cooking up some hare-brained scheme with Jonas or fooling around with that Miss Beatrice that always hung around them like a fly on rotten garbage. The tapes were a surprise, but she wasn't about to let her friends know - they might just get dragged into something.

"Look," Freddie said, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck, "I'm just telling you guys what I saw, okay? If you don't think it's anything, Micah, fine. It's your dad."

They were almost to the classroom, and Freddie slipped away - they all knew what hell he'd go through for being seen with the two biggest losers in class, not that he was Mister Popularity himself. Mr. Brotch stood at the doorway, sternly watching his young charges file through. He gave a little gasp of sarcastic surprise when Micah walked up alongside Amata.

"Oh, Miss Fitzgerald. How nice of you to join us. I'm sure you know all about the test today? Closed notes, once chance, worth twenty percent of your grade?"

Micah really wasn't in the mood for his not-so-subtle mockery, as she was too busy turning over the predicament of the holotapes and her father in her mind. She stumbled into class, sat down in her seat, and was cheerfully welcomed by her old friend - Butch DeLoria's patented "thumb tack on the chair" prank. The sharp pain and the laughter of her classmates was enough to snap her out of her thoughts for the moment.

The holotape situation would wait. Reality ensured.


	3. Chapter 3

Peter DeLoria was, on all accounts, a no-good layabout. He worked down in the Garbage Recycling Unit, lived in one of the rattiest apartments on Residential Floor C, and spent his ration credits on an assortment of alcohol and freeze-dried hot dogs. Most nights he spent piss-drunk and raving mad, and the night the Overseer's wife died was no exception.

He had indeed gone to Doctor Fitzgerald's clinic for treatment, but the good doctor wasn't there. After a few good minutes spent angrily arguing with the door for not letting him in, Mr. DeLoria still had the presence of mind to avoid the security cameras. It was simple - left, right, duck, dive, swerve right, go straight. He and his buddies had figured it out when they were kids, and he had practiced it so many times that not even a fifth of a bottle of vodka, three bottles of beer, and six shots of whiskey could hinder him.

The vault was quiet that night, just creaking and groaning as usual. It was a good night to head on over to his secret stash, Mr. DeLoria thought. It was indeed overlooking the Atrium, but it didn't contain what Doctor Fitzgerald assumed. Instead of alcohol, this stash was chock full of dangerous chems - Buffout, Stims, Med-X. This collection had been carefully put together over years of petty theft, bribery, blackmail, and performing "favors" for some of the more...elderly - and therefore more likely to have heavy medication - Vault citizens. No one else knew about his subtler addiction, and he planned to keep it that way. Hell, half of the time he drank was to cover-up the twitching that came with Buffout or the bloodshot eyes that followed heavy Stimpack use. Contrary to public opinion, Peter DeLoria was a fairly smart son-of-a-bitch.

The stash was hidden in a broken recycle tube, which was always "overlooked" when it came to inspection time, and this was were Vault Security picked him up - out of his mind on a cocktail of chems and simultaneously frothing at the mouth and jabbering uncontrollably. If Mr. DeLoria had been lucid, he might have made some protest - which the Overseer had authorized deadly force against. Luckily for him, the same drugs that were killing him saved him from a more immediate death at the hands of Vault Security. Unluckily for him, a quick shot to the head or a fatal beating with billy clubs would have been a much more merciful way to go instead of what the Overseer had planned for him.

Peter DeLoria was put under arrest for the murder of Albina Almodovar and sentenced to death - officially via electrocution, which in actuality meant him being left to the Radroaches that swarmed the upper floors of the Vault. His wife was told nothing, although she KNEW that the new doctor had SOMETHING to do with it. When she turned to drink to escape her troubles, her son took up that same hatred in her place.

* * *

Micah was at the makeshift firing range that her father had set up near the reactor, sullenly shooting at the flimsy targets. Her father was standing behind her, constantly whispering instructions and tips, constantly correcting her aim and form. For whatever reason, Doctor Fitzgerald had insisted that his daughter spend three days a week after class at the firing range. It was a constant pain in the ass for Micah, and she couldn't understand what was so important about shooting at a bunch of targets - along with the occasional Radroach - when she could be working with her terminal or tinkering with holotapes.

"Hold it a little higher, dear." James shifted his daughter's arm so that the butt of the BB gun was in the correct position, "Yes, that's it. Now fire again."

She let off a round, which completely missed the target to instead bounce off of the back wall. Her father sighed, and Micah had finally had enough. She threw the BB gun to the ground, where it fired off another round - which fortunately hit the barrier and skidded harmlessly away.

"I don't get why we're doing this, Dad!" Micah huffed and puffed, folding her short arms over her ever-expanding chest, "This is a waste of time! It's not like there's anything I need to shoot in the vault anyways!"

Her father remained calm and impassive. As always. It pissed Micah off even more. It was like he wasn't even capable of being emotional, being human.

"Calm down, sweetheart," he said in that condescending, parental tone that she hated, "I wouldn't be having you do anything if it wasn't important. Now, just pick up the gun again, and we'll -"

She jabbed an accusatory finger at him, "I can't believe you still treat me like that, Dad! Like I'm just some kind of robot that will just do whatever you say! Like I'm a baby or something! I'm not a baby! I'm fifteen years old, and I'm smart enough to make my own decisions, to make my own choices! I don't have to do what you say anymore!"

There was a flicker of annoyance on James's face, and Micah felt a little bit of pride at this small show of emotion. It was nice bringing her high and mighty father down to the level of mere mortals for once. But this moment was fleeting, and her father covered up with his trademark mask of passive indifference.

"You're not a robot, sweetie. You're your own person. But I'm still your father, and you still have to listen to me. Now, pick up the gun."

Micah turned away from him to pout, pointedly avoiding looking in his direction. She felt like a four year old, but it was all she could think to do. There wasn't any reasoning with her father. It was either that you followed his rules and were a good little girl or you didn't and you were the worst person to walk the earth. No middle ground, no diplomacy.

"I'm not going to. In fact," she gave him a cold, hard glare over her shoulder, "I might just tell the Overseer about that you forced me to use an illegal firearm. That you are flagrantly disobeying the law of the Vault and that you're forcing your poor little daughter to do so as well. I'm sure he'd like to know where you got those banned holotapes from."

That was her trump card, her ace in the hole, and it did not disappoint. Her father was ANGRY. For the first time in her life, he was actually ANGRY - not just disappointed or peeved or chiding. ANGRY. Maybe it was a little much to threaten to report to the Overseer, but it was worth it to see that little anger line between his eyebrows and the rage in his eyes. Micah couldn't help it - she liked to hurt her father.

James took a few deep breaths until the rage disappeared from his face. He spoke, his voice quivered, thinly veiling the emotions under his mask, "Micah. I suggest that you go back to the apartment now. We'll..." these last words seemed particularly hard for him to say, and it was all Micah could do to avoid breaking out into a grin, "...talk later."

And with that, Micah smugly left the room, practically oozing self-righteousness. Her father was left behind. Once the door closed and his daughter had assuredly left the immediate vicinity, he broke down into tears.

* * *

Coming off of such a rush of such malice, Micah was practically ecstatic when she finished up her program - typing the last few lines of code into the terminal with flying chubby fingers. Her father hadn't returned home since their altercation in the firing range, but she honestly didn't give a fraction of a shit about him. Maybe she would later regret her actions, maybe she wouldn't, but that was of no importance now. It was the moment of reckoning.

From a small metal crate under her desk, she retrieved a long, frayed cable. The wiring had to be adapted and practically rebuilt over the last few months, but with a quick lie to Stanley, it had been a breeze to repair. Micah hooked one end to a homemade port on the side of her terminal and the other to her Pip Boy. She was quietly thankful that she had gotten an older model than the Vault standard, as the external ports on the newer ones had been made unusable to comply with Vault law. Now it was the moment of truth.

With the lightest press of a key, the program began. Micah was practically bouncing up and down in excitement as the computer screen ran through thousands of lines of code. It was beautiful. It was incredible. It was godly. It was done.

In under 2.5 seconds, the program had completed, and Micah's terminal displayed the same screen as her Pip-Boy. Wonderful! Now, she could wirelessly

communicate with her terminal via her Pip-Boy. Not to mention that the connection of both Pip-Boy and Rob-Co terminal completely bypassed both systems' security systems, allowing her to access any terminal on the vault network not encrypted by Vault Security. No longer would she have to visit a physical terminal to ruin someone's day! No longer would she have to return to her apartment to access, say, Butch DeLoria's journal and read about his strange wet dreams involving Mr. Brotch and Susie Mack! No longer would she have to sneak around the vault to attach an external communication chip to any terminal she wanted to monitor!

So wrapped up in her own little world, the deliriously happy teenager didn't notice her father entering her room. In a few short seconds, Micah's day would invariably take a turn for the worse.

* * *

"Hello, Vault Citizens!" A booming, cheerful voice - scratchy with age - said as a cartoonish, blond man wearing a Vault Suit waved onscreen.

"If you're watching this presentation holotape, your Overseer has received a very special message from Vault-Tec Headquarters!" the man slapped his hands to his cheeks in astonishment.

"After careful inspection, the area surrounding your Vault has been approved for settlement. Now, you and your families have been chosen to resettle this great country of ours!" the man was suddenly waving an oversized American flag and cheering.

"Yes, you heard right! America is ready for greatness once more. The Communist scourge has been eradicated with cleansing nuclear fire, and the world has been wiped clean for the American race! Now you're probably wondering how you'll live without the luxuries of the Vault" the man shrugged, confused.

"Not to worry, Vault Citizens! The outside world can be just as comfortable as your assigned Vault domicile. No need to worry about getting your favorite apron dirty, ladies!"

A woman replaced the man for a moment and gave an exaggerated sigh of relief, wiping her brow. A crackly laugh track played in the background.

"Resettling planet Earth will be as natural as a thieving Chinaman!" Another laugh track played.

"All you need is a handy-dandy gizmo known as the G.E.C.K.! That stands for Garden of Eden Creation Kit. This technological wonder contains certified Vault-Tec horticulture equipment, instructions on using easily found materials to build shelter, a copy of the patented Vault-Dweller's Survival Guide, and one unit for easy water purification - guaranteed to purify up to ten years of suitable water for the average-sized vault!" the man in the vault suit came onscreen again to clap wildly.

"With the G.E.C.K., Vault-Tec is bringing a little piece of paradise to the world after the war. This concludes this portion of this presentation. Please direct your full attention to your Overseer for additional instruction. Thank you, and have a pleasant tomorrow on Communist-free Earth!" The man winked cheerily and was quickly replaced by the Vault-Tec logo, along with some credit information.

The holotape sputtered for a moment before it began to rewind.

James popped the tape out of the projector and slipped it back in its case, putting it back in the secret compartment in the ceiling vent.

He had watched this particular tape at least five times by now, and he was still waiting for some big revelation to come of it. He checked his Pip-Boy and decided that the other tapes would have to wait - he had spent at least three hours down in the reactor's side room without confronting his hormonal teenage daughter.

He sighed and quickly disassembled the projector, sliding it back into the ceiling vent as well. There weren't any cameras anywhere near the reactor - something about the energy it let off disrupted anything that wasn't specially shielded by any of the reactor's technicians - and that was about the only thing James had going for him at the moment. The room that was his daughter's firing range doubled as his research area. A little risky, perhaps, but he hadn't thought that Micah would have been quite smart enough to go poking around in the vents for information that could run her father's - and her own - life.

That was enough stalling, James thought. He had to face his daughter sometime.

James exited the room, not relishing the fact that he had to defuse the ticking teenage timebomb that awaited him at home. He was so caught up in his own thoughts - a common characteristic in his family - that he didn't even notice the man that fell into step beside him.

"Family trouble, James?"

It was Jonas, his perky young lab assistant who also worked part-time as a reactor technician. He smiled at him, and James gave a weak nod back in response - trying to quicken his pace, which his co-worker easily matched.

"Makes sense. The only time I see you this down is when Micah acts up. Or when it's freeze-dried spinach day in the cafeteria!"

Jonas laughed dryly and moved a little too close for comfort. James sighed. While he appreciated the attention and the friendliness that his assistant showed him, he just wasn't...that way. Not that he'd ever mentioned it to Jonas, but... On any account, he moved away a little to try not to embarrass the poor kid.

"Teenagers are just trouble, it seems. You were probably a handful for your own mother, back in the day." James said flatly, slowing down his pace to delay the inevitable.

"It wasn't THAT long ago that I was Micah's age. But anyways, why are you so glum? I can't imagine that Micah went and made you a grandfather, or got into a nasty fight. What'd she do?"

"You know how we 'practice in that side room?"

"Yeah. Training her to be a radroach hunter, by the looks of it."

"She...confronted me. She..." James paused, trying to fight back the bile in his throat, "Micah knows about the holotapes, Jonas. And she threatened to expose me to the Overseer. She might not know the whole picture quite yet, but she's going to figure it out..."

Jonas looked stunned for a moment, but recovered long enough to give him a reassuring on hand on his shoulder that James accepted - just for now.

"Don't worry about it. She's YOUR daughter. She wouldn't rat out family." Jonas said, swiftly returning his side, "Just go up and TALK to her. I think she deserves an explanation."

James held his tongue. His assistant only knew about the very TIP of the iceberg. It took a fair amount of will to not snap and shout that he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Despite Jonas' good intentions, the truth would get them nowhere. But he was willing to lie to let the issue die.

"Maybe you're right, Jonas." Just like they had his whole life, the lies spilled out of him like a swift, irradiated river of deceit, "I'm going to talk to Micah about what she saw. Set things straight. Wish me luck."

It hurt his conscience a little as James walked away from the reactor and into the unknown of parenting. But not much.

Sometimes, it wasn't such a sin to tell a lie.

Once she realized her bedroom's door was open, Micah's heart stopped. It wouldn't have been much of a surprise if it had happened literally - considering her "big bones" - but she was lucky enough that this was entirely figurative - though it got dangerously close.

A single thought shot through her paralyzed mind before she drew a total blank.

"SHIT."

Micah's body was entirely frozen in place except for her shifty eyes. She had read about the fight-or-flight response in class, but she'd never thought she'd actually experience it herself. A series of thoughts spat out of her brain at once, forming tangled plans of dubious quality.

Maybe she could pretend she'd gone insane by chewing off her own hand.

Maybe she could tackle her father to the ground and kill him before he even said a peep.

Maybe she could just die. Right there. Then her father couldn't be mad. You can't be mad at a corpse. Can't ever be mad at the corpse of your daughter. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ev-

"Hello, Micah. Let's have a friendly father-daughter chat."

Micah went half-heartedly with her third plan. She didn't fall over dead in her chair, but at least she fainted.

The sweet release of unconsciousness.

* * *

Being the sort of good father that he was, James took a couple minutes after he set his daughter onto her bed to look around her room. He told himself that it was strictly for medical purposes at first, but later relented - he was looking for blackmail material on his own daughter.

After rummaging through a few drawers and shuffling a few papers on the desk, James came up with nothing. He wasn't sure that he was happy that his daughter hadn't committed any punishable offenses or not. All he knew is that he had to keep Micah from exposing him to the Overseer. At any cost. He turned to the terminal, which his daughter had been working on before he came in. He couldn't understand anything from the program itself, but it looked to be like some kind of connection system - judging from the long cable that protruded from the system and lay plainly on the desk top. Any and all electronic connections without permission from the Overseer was strictly prohibited - a very serious offense with very serious consequences. He felt sick to his stomach. Was he really the sort of man that would do this to his own flesh and blood?

Micah began to stir, and James had to keep up appearances, as callus as that sounded. He filed away what he had seen for future reference, knowing that his daughter would hide the evidence of her activities a lot better the next time he went looking. At least with this, he could possibly threaten her into keeping silent.

Blackmailing his own daughter to cover-up for his own illegal activities. Catherine must be rolling in her grave.

A radroach skittered across the steel floor, antennae flicking and twitching. At any moment, prey or predator might cross its path, and it had to be ready to fight or flee. What little brainpower it had was consumed with consumption.

Eat is life.

Eaten is death.

The roach wriggled through a gap in the wall. There was something. Something to eat. It picked up signs that others had followed the same path towards the something.

Others. Eat. Others. Eaten.

It paused for a moment. Eaten. Others. Eaten. The taste of Others hung heavy in the air - Others with cracked carapaces, Others with broken antennae.

Others Eat.

The radroach continued on its way.

Others was Eaten. Others was Eat. Eat.

A hole in the steel, a tiny hole. A tunnel below.

The smell of Eat.

The roach left the steel and followed the scent.

Eat. Eat.

The tunnel was long. Had the radroach any sense of advanced scale and spatial reasoning, it might have been able to observed the approximate length of said tunnel. Unfortunately, it could not. Such is the life of a mutated cockroach.

The scent of Eat.

Stronger.

Closer.

The radroach reached the end and cautiously waved its antennae to test the air.

There was Eat.

There was Eaten.

But there was also Eater.

From the vibrations that shook its antennae as the radroach brushed them against the walls of the tunnel, there was only one word to describe the Eaters:

BIG.

The lure of Eat proved strong enough to overcome instinctual fear.

Without Eat, would be Eaten.

With a jolt, the radraoch dashed off into the unknown cavern beyond the mouth of the tunnel. And with a snap, the giant ants that made the unknown home tore the smaller insect apart with their gargantuan jaws. There was only enough time to feel the agonizing pain of death for a moment before the radroach was beheaded with a snip.

Eat.  
Eaten.  
Eater.

* * *

Shotgun shells were hard to come by these days, but nothing took the edge off a night of too much jet and too little booze like blowing the fucking head off one of those fucking ants. In the syphilis riddled mind of Jak the raider, that wonderful feeling of ending another creature's life in the messiest way possible was even better than sleeping around with all the chem-addled bimbos that had flocked to the ruins of Springville Elementary. Not that those sluts were particularly tight or that they were particularly good when they were so fucked up on chems that the act was little more than the feeling of fucking a loose sock filled with molerat meat - which Jak had had plenty of experience in when the lean times rolled around.

The boss man had specifically said NOT to shoot at the ants unless there was backup. Well, backup was currently half-naked and hanging off the side of a chair with a half-finished bottle of Buffout in hand. Jak rifled through said backup's pockets for some loose shells and came up with nothing. He found a package of Mentats, though, so he'd call it a win.

Jak popped the Mentat pills in his mouth and lifted his shotgun to his hip like the picture of the Pre-War gangster he'd seen on one of the buildings downtown, facing the dark tunnel with a gap-toothed grin. It felt fucking badass.

There was a scrambling farther down, and Jak shot at it. The recoil hurt his hip more than expected, and his aim was shitty as fuck so he lifted it back up into the proper position. The blast from the shell lit up the tunnel just enough so he could see one of the ants, which was now scuttling towards him.

Jak fired again and heard a scream and a splatter.

B-I-N-G-fucking-O.

Got that motherfucker RIGHT in the face.

His chest inflated with pride, which caused his diseased lungs to ache like a wasteland whore after he got done with them - or so he assumed, having never been on the end of a fucking except for that one time downtown...

He hocked up some mucus from the back of his throat and spat it at the ant he downed. Felt good to be the fucking king, deciding who lives and who dies. Even if it was just a bunch of retarded ants.

Had Jak not abused his body to the point of no return and wasn't hopped up on Mentats, he probably would have heard the scuttling as he slung his shotgun over his shoulder and turned away. If he hadn't been thinking of that redhead he'd seen passed out on the couch upstairs and how he'd get enough caps to pay one of the caravan doctors to check out that oozing scab he had on the back of his thigh, Jak might have still been around long enough to be shot down by that crazy kid from Vault 101.

Mandibles clicked, legs flexed, and the ant sprung, digging its jaws into the raider's leg. It nearly sliced right through, jaggedly ripping through skin, muscle, and tendons. Jak howled in pain and reached around for his gun, only to have his left arm be eviscerated below the elbow. He screamed for backup. Backup had gone to use the restroom in a quiet corner while Jak was playing big game hunter.

There was blood everywhere, Jak realized when he raised his other arm to strike at the beast. He wasn't sure who the asshole was that split it, but he'd have hell to pay once the boss man found out. No blood allowed in the tunnel. Attracts the ants. Ruins the plan. The plan... The plan to break into that damn Vault.

The ant went for his torso, crushing his ribs and slicing through his ragged clothes. But Jak wasn't dead yet, even as he fell to the ground in a bloody heap. He tried his hardest to fend off the ant, trying to flail body parts he no longer had.

In his final minutes, Jak tried to go out fighting.

Instead, he went out simultaneously pissing and crapping himself as a giant, vengeful ant pierced the walls of his stomach. Such was the life of a mutated wastelander.

* * *

Ignorant to the plight of the wasteland outside, Micah could be excused for thinking that HER problem was important.

After all, blackmailing one's father and then having said father find materials for which to blackmail YOU with wasn't high up on the list of approved Vault activities. If either of the Fitzgeralds should reveal their respective dirt on the other, a full scale investigation by the Overseer could be launched and both of their traitorous would be revealed, one way or another. Micah was reminded of a term she learned in class: "mutually assured destruction". This principle presumably protected Pre-War America from the nuclear weapons of Red China - by counteracting their nuclear weapons with weapons of their own. Obviously, it hadn't worked out quite as planned, but nuclear war seemed appropriate to compare to the current situation.

Her father had been hovering over her when she woke from her faint, putting on that fake "oh-my-poor-little-baby-girl" act. As usual, Micah thought bitterly. James Fitzgerald wouldn't win any awards in parenting. He was always gone when his daughter needed him, always making absolute judgement on things he would never understand, always there to rub condescending salt in her wounds.

He had rushed her off to the clinic, calling in Jonas for a stretcher which the two men could barely carry when Micah was on it. Her father kept asking questions like if she was okay or if she could remember the date, but Micah knew it was all a ruse to distract her from the real issue: her terminal. While she knew that her father couldn't POSSIBLY understand the code itself, she knew that he knew that connections between two pieces of Vault electronic equipment was a capital offense without the Overseer's express permission. All she had on her father was that he had somehow sneaked contraband holotapes past security. But both of their evidence on each other was fairly flimsy but investigation provoking, which would eventually lead to any other skeletons hidden in their closets to jump out and dance the Charleston. Mutually assured destruction.

After a few hours in the clinic, Micah's father declared her well enough for supervised bed reset, which was precisely the last thing that she needed at the moment. At least when he was in the clinic, she could assure that he wasn't poking around her room. But if he watched her in her room, she'd have to play sick to convince him to let down his guard and keep him occupied. Then she'd eventually make a mistake, and he'd confront her. That's where she was currently, groaning and moaning to imitate the ill. What a use of her talents.

Micah had to admit that her father was doing a good job of keeping up his "caring" act. It almost seemed...real. For a moment anyways. Micah's mind was much too superior to influenced by emotions - real or fake. Right now, James Fitzgerald was her enemy. She would keep an eye on him over the next few weeks, as he would no doubt do to her. It reminded her of another term from class: "Cold War" - a conflict without any actual battles, just cold calculations and careful espionage.

In her mind, she was the glorious United States of America and her father was the weak communist aggressors of The People's Republic of China. In history, they both fell. In the present, a cool truce would emerge. A "Cold War" - thinly masked displays of affections that covered up the bigger threat of weakness exploitation, normal conversations stained with the promise of destruction, the perfect existence on the outside with the cracked and rotting shell of ambition on the inside.

If Micah had to be honest with herself, she was rather...excited to enter such an exchange with her father. They'd probably talk more under the threat of blackmail more than they'd talked before in their entire lives. Her father would spend more time with her, if just for the sake of controlling her. As twisted as it was, this "Cold War" was a healthier father-daughter relationship than the one that preceded it. Rather sickening, but such is life.

A Cold War and the threat of mutually assured destruction was bringing their family back together.

It was just like the movies.

"Good morning, father."

Micah set down her re-processed bowl of Sugar Bombs as she awaited his response. He was at the seat across from her in the cafeteria booth just as he was every morning, flicking through the daily Vault announcements on his Pip-Boy. Nothing suggested that anything was off to the other Vault citizens that populated the crowed room, other than the fact that the Fitzgeralds were speaking to one another.

"Good morning, Micah," James said after a long pause, "Classes start in fifteen minutes, you know."

He gave her a knowing wink.

Micah wrapped her fingers around the edge of the table and clamped down tightly, hoping that the tension and pain would keep her from showing any detectable emotions. Had she any measurable amount of physical strength, the table would have cracked or at least bent a little.

_How dare he! Treating me like a child! Aren't I just as good as him? Haven't I always been as good as him? Aren't I even better than him? Aren't I even better? Aren't I -_

"Thank you, father," she said through clenched teeth, not betraying the slightest change in countenance.

James gave an amused twitch of a smile and was about to reply.

_I can't believe he had the fucking BALLS to do that to me! Him and that fucking SMILE of his! Like I'm throwing a FIT! Like I'm six again! I'm not throwing a fit! I'm not! I'm not! I'm not! I'm no-_

James had just enough time to utter the first syllable of his sentence before Micah lost control for a moment.

Just a moment.

Just a measly little second of a moment of a minuscule amount of time to ruin her entire plan, her entire LIFE.

The bowl of Sugar Bombs went flying. It shattered against the wall. The other people turned to the sound and were just in time to see an overweight, teen-aged Asian girl land hit after solid hit on her father's face.

It only took Officer Gomez - a trained professional who had been enjoying a nice and normal silent breakfast with his son - a few seconds for his mind to jump from "What should I have with my toast?" to "Neutralize the target". He grabbed Micah around the middle and dragged her out to the hall as she kicked and screamed like a madman. The doctor was left to nurse his bruises and broken, swelling nose.

Just a moment. Just one tiny, little moment.

When Micah was thrown in the Security Detainment Area (casually known around the Vault as the "Sink"), she was more than ready to spill the beans on anything and anyone. But after literally doing so in the corner of her cell and trying to do so figuratively to the guard on duty (who threatened to "sedate" her with his nightstick), she soon realized something.

For the first time since she could remember - which, being a teenager, only stretched back to age twelve or so - SHE had made a mistake. Not Amata, not her father, not even Fuck-Up Freddie (a nickname she'd secretly coined). There was no scapegoat this time, no higher power to blame, no part to replace in the great machinery of her life.

She had just made a mistake - a big one.

It was this realization that kept her huddled up and crying until Officer Gomez came to release her and escort her back to class. He was kind enough to let her stop by the restroom to wipe the shame off of her face, probably mistaking her tears as ones of regret or guilt or maybe even apology.

He was wrong.

Micah was not crying tears of regret or guilt or apology. She was in mourning. In mourning because of the death of her own broken pride.

A trip to the Sink was like being dunked into a garbage pit. No one wanted to be around you, but they were all fascinated from afar. Some people might get interested in that ambiguously plastic green chunk tangled in your hair or they might silently wonder if those red things stuck to your arm are the tampons their older sister threw out last week.

There was a certain allure to the Sink, and Micah's classmates were drawn to the sheer REBELLION that necessitated serving a term there. That being said, only two others in this particular class had the dubious honor of being veterans of the Sink: Wally Mack, who served an hour or so for blatantly defacing the walls of the men's restroom with rather unsanitary materials, and Butch DeLoria, who spent, not one, but two separate day-long sentences for physically assaulting Micah and Amata as they walked home from school.

Now that the local, non combative geek had done time in the Sink - for assaulting her father, no less - and had returned in record time, her former detractors and bullies were notably less aggressive. They were scared of her, although none of them would ever admit it under pain of death. That was just fine with Micah. If she could not be loved, let her be feared instead. At least for the moment.

At the end of class, Amata lightly tapped Micah on the shoulder. When she looked up, Micah could tell that their walk home wouldn't be filled with their usual talk of boys and comic books.

"What happened, Micah?" Amata said with her voice wavering.

They were walking home, back to their dingy apartments and their dingy lives. Freddie, who had become a mainstay on the route home, was nowhere to be found after class ended. He had slipped away like a ghost. It had been he who had seen first-hand what Micah did to her father in the cafeteria and had told the story to Mr. Brotch when she had not shown up for class afterwards. Freddie was most likely hiding somewhere until this all blew over.

_Not sure if it will all blow over._

"Micah!" Amata shoved her friend to get a response, any response.

Micah didn't answer, didn't even register her friend's presence. She just kept plodding along at a slow and steady pace, like a Pre-War Protectron. This wasn't like Micah at all.

"Look, if you don't want to tell me what the problem is, I'll just leave you all by yourself!"

Amata pushed past Micah and hurried off down the hall, hoping that this would garner some sort of response. It did not. She quickly returned to her friend's side and began shaking her violently.

"Micah! Micah! Micah!"

At last, Micah's dull brown eyes turned to hers as she whispered, "What...?"

"What's wrong with you, Micah? You've been acting weird since you got back from the Sink. Did...did they do anything...to you?"

Amata let go of her friend's shoulders, not sure how to react.

"No..."

"Then what's wrong?"

"Life is wrong..."

"Life? What's that supposed to mean?"

"My life is wrong... I screwed up. I made a mistake..."

Micah turned her eyes away to gaze down at her feet, and Amata sighed in relief. Now THIS was typical Micah.

"There's nothing wrong with making a mistake, you idiot. Everybody makes mistakes."

This seemed to affect her more than the other comments had.

Micah, raising her eyes to meet Amata's, scowled and said with her voice picking up volume until she was practically screaming, "Have you ever made a mistake that could screw up the entire Vault, Amata? Have you ever done something so wrong that your entire WORLD could fall apart? Huh? Huh? HUH?"

"W-What do you mean...? 'Screw up the vault'...?"

Micah turned away and began to walk towards her apartment. Amata followed her.

"What's wrong NOW, Micah?"

"I shouldn't be sharing this with the Overseer's daughter."

Amata stopped, dumbfounded. Micah had never cared that her father was the Overseer before. What had she done? And why did it matter so much?

"What do you mean because I'm the 'Overseer's daughter'? We're friends, Micah! You know that I wouldn't betray you, not in a million years!"

"You say that now."

Micah suddenly picked up speed and dashed away, boots skidding on the steel floor. Amata was left to her thoughts.

_What has she done? What did Micah DO?_


	4. Chapter 4

"...Do you want an apology, Dad?"

"An apology would be nice, yes."

He smiled and Micah wished she'd bust open his mouth instead. They were in the clinic, as a trip to the Sink required a follow-up psychological evaluation by a trained Vault Medical Technician - who just happened to be the injured party and father to the patient in this case. There'd been rumors floating around these past few days - couldn't be helped in as small as a community as Vault 101. All of them told conflicting versions of the same story - that Micah had been physically abused by her father and had just fought back that one morning in the cafeteria, that James was the victim and was under the tyrannical thumb of his violently insane and spoiled daughter, that they were both completely out of their minds on whatever they had "brought with them" and that the true Vault Citizens had to be on high alert in case they turned on them. All of these were grounded in what little knowledge the others had about the Fitzgerald family, as they were notoriously quiet and insular as compared to the other denizens of the Vault.

"I'm not going to apologize."

"That's perfectly fine, Micah. We have plenty of time to sort this all out. No need to rush."

The bandages on his nose wrinkled and crinkled when he gave her that insipid little fatherly smile of his.

"Can't I just go home?

"Not quite yet. You and I have to complete this evaluation first. Overseer's orders."

"What have you been writing about me on that notepad, Dad?"

Micah made a sudden grab for the notepad in her father's arms, but years of neglecting physical activity had run hell on her hand-eye coordination and her father was too fast for her. She folded her arms in a huff.

"Don't give me that face, Micah."

"What face?"

Micah looked like she had tried to bite into one of Beatrice's homemade lemon pies.

"That one."

"...I want to know what you're writing about."

"Just some preliminary information. Kid stuff, really. You wouldn't be interested."

_Nice try. But I'm not THAT easy._

"Like what, Dad?"

"Like that you're my daughter, that you were detained for two hours before being released to classes, that you're fifteen years old. That sort of thing."

"So, you haven't written about WHY I was detained yet."

"Not yet, no."

"Then you're an awful shrink, Dad."

Micah gave a little smirk when her father smiled. She wanted to punch him in the face again more than she wanted to win the Vault-wide marathon.

"Joking aside, we really need to get down to business."

"I want to go home."

"Sorry, kiddo. All praise the Overseer."

There was an undertone of sarcasm that set Micah on edge. She briefly glanced at the Vault Guard on duty, who stood just outside the clinic door. The pistol on his hip would certainly do them both in without a second thought.

"Something wrong, Micah?"

"No, nothing."

"Good. I want this to be over just as quickly as you do."

_Doubt it._

"Now, please answer the following questions as honestly as possible: 'Do you hear voices, either external or internal, that tell you to perform certain actions or activities?'."

"No."

"'Are you abnormally afraid or nervous, even when in a neutral or positive environment?'"

"No."

"Are you often drowsy and disoriented?"

"No. What's the point of this, Dad? You probably know all of this anyways."

"Merely a formality, dear. Now... 'Do you commonly find yourself unable to determine the current time, date, or year?'."

This line of questioning continued for a while, and Micah's mouth grew numb from constantly repeating "No". Was there really a point to all of this or was her father just trying to bore her into some kind of confession?

"Alright, we're all done here," her father said as he stretched out nonchalantly.

_As if he DIDN'T just determine the sanity of his own daughter. Typical._

Micah made to get up, but her father held up a hand and eyed the guard. He motioned for her to sit back down and she thought that it was wise to pay attention for once.

"Now, I have just a few MORE things to tell you, if you'll listen."

Her father had that little twinkle in his eye that he had when he first introduced "training time" down on the firing range on her tenth birthday.

"What is it, Dad? I thought we were 'all done here'."

"We're done with the evaluation. That's what I meant."

"And the results...?"

"You're certainly not crazy, Micah, though I never suspected as such. You're just a teenage girl, I'm afraid."

"Then what's the big deal?!"

Micah jumped to her feet and the guard looked over. There was a sheet of sound-proof glass and steel between them, but it certainly wasn't bulletproof. She quickly sat back down and faced her father like nothing happened. He had her trapped, and they both knew it.

_Clever bastard._

"Calm down, Micah. Calm down. I don't want to have to tell our friend over there to come and sedate you."

"What do you want to talk about? What's so important that you let me punch you to get me into this psychological evaluation so that you could tell me something under the threat of an armed guard coming in and 'sedating' me."

"You really get to the point. Well..."

James trailed off and Micah wished that the guard would come in and shoot him in that stupid face of his. He was ready and willing to talk at first, but now he was just taking his sweet time. Her father was enjoying keeping her in suspense.

"Well?"

"Well..."

"Just get on with it, Dad."

"Hey, don't be so impatient. Didn't I raise you better than this?"

"You didn't raise me at all."

"Ouch. Right in the fatherly instinct there, Micah. You sure do have a sharp tongue on you."

"Get to the point, Dad."

"Fine, fine," her father put up his hands in mock defeat and brought them back down to the notepad to mime writing something down, "What I really need to tell you is this: I know what you've been doing in your room, Micah. And I want in on it."

Micah had a witty retort for this kind of situation. She had planned it, dreamed about it, acted it out in the dead of night. But she wasn't expecting those last six words to be part of this.

"You don't have to answer quite yet, honey. I understand that it takes you a while to make decisions of this...nature. But I want some kind of confirmation by the end of the week. Either we're both in this together, or we're both taking the fall for what we've done."

He gave her a pat on the shoulder as he walked out of the room, giving a friendly nod to the guard stationed outside. He said a few words that Micah didn't hear. She couldn't hear.

For the second time in the past three days, Micah was utterly speechless, disoriented, and totally out of her depth.

The ball was in her court now.

* * *

The Overseer's office had always given Officer Gomez the creeps. No matter what he was going down there for, it was always so dour and eerie. Back when they were dating as teenagers, he and his wife used to giggle about there being ghosts down in the Overseer's hall. But he wasn't giggling now. He knew there was ghosts down there - the ghosts of the past.

It wasn't like he was delivering a death sentence or a troubled teenager or bad news. All he was bringing was a little report on how the Fitzgeralds did in their psychological evaluation. He'd taken the doctor's notes and read them over. Nothing out of the ordinary, he said, just a little stress about the upcoming pre-G.O.A.T., which they had apparently been discussing over breakfast.

Gomez was inclined to believe James, seeing as how he hadn't turned he or his family wrong in the past before. Doctor James had always been so kind with them before all of this happened: helping little Freddie with losing his first tooth, always checking up on the wife whenever she had one of her cluster migraines. Why, even last week he helped them out by fixing Freddie's dislocated shoulder - which he swore that he got "during math class". If anything, the Overseer should be more worried about Butch DeLoria and his little group of friends than the good doctor. But it wasn't Officer Gomez's place to make those decisions. The Overseer's word was law, and the law of the day was "bring those damn notes to my office, Gomez".

Pictures of the Overseer's late wife lined the hall like an altar, all glaring down at him with their cold, dead eyes like he was their offering of fresh blood. After so many trips, he'd memorized the pattern. Wedding, birthday, at a desk, birthday, birthday, daughter's birth, wedding, wedding, wedding, wedding, graduation. God, there were a lot of wedding photographs.

He really wasn't sure why it wasn't the OVERSEER attending the evaluation instead of the doctor's little daughter, who Freddie said was "pretty alright, for a girl". But that was a blasphemous thought. A dirty, nasty, blasphemous thought. Everybody else could screw up, but the Overseer couldn't. They couldn't. They were infallible, all-knowing, and all-powerful. The Overseer, while not God, was as close as Officer Gomez could get in this nuclear bunker in the middle of Washington D.c., and that was good enough.

But not quite good enough to keep Officer Gomez from accidentally "dropping" one of the pages from Doctor Fitzgerald's notes and accidentally "forgetting" to tell the Overseer about the time the Fitzgeralds had spent obviously NOT completely their psychological evaluation. After all, the Overseer was incorruptible, but mere mortals like Officer Gomez were not.

* * *

Her tears burnt like sulfur as they slid down her face. They were shameful and desperate, and Micah hated herself for spilling them. She was the greatest mind in the Vault - a genius! Did Tesla ever cry when HIS life went south? Did Galileo? Did Copernicus? No! But they weren't fat little teenage girls, were they?

Micah sat alone on her bed, curled up with her hands around her knees. It was three o'clock in the morning, and she hadn't slept a wink. It had been two days, twelve hours, twenty-four minutes, and fifteen seconds since her father dropped his bombshell. Her program, her beautiful magnum opus, had been her downfall. And now...her father wanted to take it all away from her. All that work, all those long nights of coding, all those frantic attempts at beta testing. SHE did all that. Not him. But he wanted it anyways, just wanted to fucking SAUNTER in and take her work. Micah couldn't let him win, not just yet - not while she was still breathing.

There was always Plan B. She gave a long look to the dusty BB gun that sat in the corner of her room. It'd work the same if it were real, right? It was all the same. If she could just get a real gun...maybe. Maybe she'd do it. What she meant by "it" she didn't quite know yet. Shoot her father? Shoot the Overseer? Shoot herself? There were so many variables that came with a gun, so many little things to do.

It was times like these that Micah wished that she'd gotten into religion. Her father was always pushing the Bible at her, even though religious texts were banned in Vault 101. Would that god save her? Would He save such an imperfect, sinful creature?

Micah gave a particularly loud, choking sob and collapsed even farther into her knees - hugging them tightly.

No. No god would save her. No higher power would come to spirit her away to a land of milk and honey. There would be no guardian angel, no spiritual enlightenment, no flaming bush to guide her way. All Micah had was herself. That was the way it had always been and the way it always will be. No one else mattered. No one else cared. No one else knew. Only she mattered, only she cared, only she knew.

All alone in her room and all alone in her thoughts, Micah felt like the loneliest person in the world. Little did she know that her father was feeling the exact same thing.

* * *

One would think that the Overseer's office would be harder to break into, not to mention harder to reach. The only thing that got in the way was a guard or two, but they were easy to avoid - especially if one made up a cock-and-bull story about making a house call. As loyal and discrete as they were, perhaps the Overseer should have put intelligence a little higher on the qualification list.

There was a bottle of scotch in the bottom desk drawer, and James was glad that his boyhood hobby of picking locks had come back to him enough to help him acquire it. It was only about half-full, but that didn't really matter at this point. He was ready for a drink, even if it was musty and sour tasting.

James took a sip and winced. Disgusting! But it took his mind off of...Micah. His little baby girl. Where had he gone so wrong with her? Should he have spent more time with her? Laid her to sleep on her stomach? Done the Charleston backwards in front of her crib every morning? Was he really so bad of a parent that he had to threaten his daughter with what was essentially death to get what he wanted?

Purity...Purity... The word sounded familiar to him, but another swig of scotch took care of that. Purity didn't matter in the slightest. What mattered was...was...water. Clean...clean water. That's what he'd spent his life working on, what he'd neglected his wife and daughter for, what he'd gone to this damn Vault in the first place for.

But did it really matter? Was it worth all the bloodshed and neglect that his life had become? Would anyone really care if he just gave up? No one on the outside knew where he was...other than those bastards at the Brotherhood. Why couldn't they have just stormed this fucking Vault in the first place and raid it for the information that they needed?

James would have been disgusted by these thoughts were he sober enough to care. Under the influence of alcohol, anything that passed through his mind sounded like a good idea.

Storming Vault 101 and killing everyone in there just to get what he wanted? Great idea!

Shooting the Overseer and taking over by himself? Great idea!

Just beating Micah into submission? Well...he wasn't THAT drunk yet.

His Pip-Boy beeped and broke him out of his drunken stupor. He had precisely five minutes before the Overseer returned. He reeled and stumbled to get out of the office. The bottle of scotch smashed on the ground, but James was too careless to notice.

There'd be hell to pay for his little visit. Thank the Lord for the brain-numbing effects of alcohol.

* * *

"You okay, Micah?"

It was lunchtime. Micah and Amata were sitting in a desolate corner of the classroom while their classmates chatted away in the center, per usual. It had been four days since Micah's father had confronted her about her project, and she had only gone back to school yesterday.

"I'm fine, Amata."

Amata looked over her shoulder to make sure that none of the others were paying attention to them and then whispered her reply.

"No. You're not. You're not fine. I know you, Micah."

"No. You don't."

"Yes. I do. I've known you since we were both just little babies, I've been to every single one of your birthday parties and you to mine, I've even lent you...you know...tampons... So I DO know you. And you know me. And you know that I'm not just going to let you be this way. You're not fine, Micah. Not at all."

"Shut up."

"Don't take this out on me, Micah! What's really wrong? Is...is...is it something to do with your dad and those...things?"

Amata's eyes grew wide and curious.

"Why should I tell you? You're the Overseer's daughter."

Amata looked like she was ready to slap Micah for that comment.

"Don't you DARE bring that into this, Micah! I trust you and you trust me! I'm not going to tell my father on you! I never have!"

"You're just lying to me."

Micah poked at her Dandy Boy Snack Cakes, another sign that something was wrong. At this point in the lunch period, they were usually gone - either eaten or stolen by Butch, who had been surprisingly absent from his bullying duties.

"Whatever, Micah," Amata threw up her hands dramatically in exasperation, "I don't have time for this if you're not going to help yourself. I'll come back later when you've gotten the sense knocked back into you."

Micah grunted in response and watched her friend slip away, back into her seat. Stupid, stupid, sweet Amata. A know-nothing busybody, she was. But Micah appreciated her concern, at least for the moment. But she had already made her decision. Her dreary mood was not based upon brooding, but rather upon anticipation.

Her father would get his program from her, but he might be a little...disappointed.

* * *

It is an accepted fact that computer programs run on a system of interacting variables. For example, a certain outcome might have the success variable assigned to the number six. Any other number other than six presents a failure. Now, let's say that the same program has been designed to recognize certain formulas as a "success" or as the number six: three plus three, four plus two, six plus zero, five plus one, etc.

Now, a computer program doesn't know anything more than the person who programmed it, so it can be programmed to recognize values of six that are false: five plus two, six plus one, four plus eight, etc. All of these are considered "true" and a certain outcome will occur, if the programmer is careful about putting said errors into the code. However, seeing that a program is a SYSTEM of interacting variables, let's suppose that there's a second variable added that modifies the first one. Let's call the variable being modified "X" and the variable modifying "Y". Y is the number of times that X is successfully run. Y could be programmed to shut down or stop X's outcome if the variable assigned to it reaches a certain amount, say fifty. Once Y reaches fifty, it will stop X's outcome from occurring.

That, dear friends, is a short summary of one of the fail safes that Micah inserted into her program the night before she handed it off to her father - along with a few others. Any time the program was run successfully, it added to a counter. Once said counter reaches the preset limit, all of the information that had been processed could be easily transferred to another device through an external connection. Of course, her father didn't know anything about this - how his daughter planned to spy on his life's work.

Micah felt a little giddy, running through the code like wildfire burnt at her fingertips. This was exciting, her pièce de résistance to complete her masterwork. It didn't matter that she'd isolated her only friend, didn't matter that - right now - Butch was planning to kick her in the kneecaps the following day, didn't matter that she was essentially betraying her only living relative. Her father was the enemy - the foreign aggressor. And like the days of old, Micah would drive him out of her life and her mind but keep a watchful eye on him all the same.

She felt the urge to give off a wild cackle. She was a God once more, master of her own domain. She needed no one, no body, and no thing. Everything, she felt, was going right for once in her short, sad little life.

But, of course, all good things must come to an end. It just wouldn't be dramatic if everything went according to plan, would it?

* * *

The first thing that Micah did after "fixing" her program was take a piss. The second - and more important - thing she did was practice her lines. She'd written them out on scrap pieces of paper and on the backs of her comic books. They were perfect.

"I've decided, father," Micah looked in the the bathroom mirror and tried to look for any inconsistencies in her expression, "You may have the program."

Should she change "father" to "daddy"? Would that make it more personal? Or would it tip him off that something was wrong? There was something called over-rehearsing one's lines, as Micah had found out in her performance as a table in the annual Founder's Day play.

Her mind was running at a mile a minute, blazing through thoughts and ideas at a lighting fast pace. Her breath quickened, and she began to sweat. Micah reached for her ventilation bag, safely tucked into the left pocket of her vault suit. That was one thing her father was good for, she decided. One thing that he ever did to keep his only child from certain death.

There was a knock at the bathroom door, and she flushed the toilet to mask the sound of her audible squeak. Micah wasn't quite ready, but this would have to do. It was time to dim the lights, draw the curtains, and begin. Showtime in Vault Apartment Unit 17-A. Come one, come all!

* * *

There was a certain level of joy that came with knowing that no one knew you. A certain level of exhilaration that came from the gentle squeaking of a steel floor, the soft swish of automatic doors as they opened for you and no one else, the lovely caress of the air-conditioned Vault air as you climbed around in the air ventilation shafts. Anonymity is truly the way to live.

These were the thoughts of one Freddie Gomez, aged fifteen, as he practiced his hobby - sneaking about Vault 101. Now, Freddie wasn't the smartest boy or the cutest or the anything-est, but he was one slippery son-of-a-bitch - aided in no small part by the sheer amount of grease that gave a sickly sheen to his teen-aged face.

He was a small, rat-like boy with a penchant for being very quick to switch sides as it suited him. One day, he might spend it with the two losers of the class - Micah and Amata. The next, he'll be first in line to pummel them into submission on the walk home from school. This was, in no small part, thanks to the medication that the good doctor was forced to put him on for Vault Depressive Disorder. Two pills in the morning, one at lunch, two at night. Freddie was very punctual when it came to things like medication. He truly wanted to get better, but the medicine came with a few downsides that he didn't particularly enjoy.

First came the nausea, the stomach pain, and the headaches. Then came the violent mood swings, the erratic behavior, and the physical tics. And lastly, came the compulsive disorders. Two hundred year old cocktails of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics were harsh mistresses.

He had just taken his nightly dose when he felt the overwhelming urge to "check up" on the other denizens of the Vault. It started as an itch, then became a stinging pain, then grew into a raging wildfire of need. At this point, Freddie needed to creep around as much as he needed to breathe. After all, without him checking up on them, how could the citizens of Vault 101 sleep soundly at night? He was like a comic book hero - like Grognak, even though he didn't swing a sword about and save busty, scantily-clad damsels...yet.

Freddie decided to take his usual route through the living quarters: Mack, DeLoria, Fitzgerald, Palmer, Taylor. He found nothing of interest in the Mack residence: only that Mr. Mack was being cuckolded by his fiery wife again and that Susie was masturbating to her framed portrait of Butch again. Boring.

He soon moved onto the second residence, taking the vents per usual. The DeLoria's weren't very surprising or interesting either. Just Butch greasing up his hair and Ms. DeLoria drinking herself stupid with the same old vodka 'n' scotch shots she always had. Wouldn't anyone do anything interesting for him to write in his observation journal?

It was at the Fitzgerald's where things really started to heat up. As a rule, he didn't usually spy on Micah or her father - seeing as one provided his medication and one...well... But that wasn't important at the moment. He was right above the two in the ventilation shaft and he pressed his ear to the grate to get a better grasp of what the two were saying to one another.

"Decided...program...you...father..."

That was Micah, alright. Same nasally little voice, same lack of emotion.

"Micah...program...thank...sweetheart..."

That must be Doctor James, obviously. Not like there would be anyone else in their apartment at this time of night, although Miss Beatrice had certainly tried.

Could this be about the tapes? What was this about a program?

There was only the sound of the cool air running through the vents for a few minutes. Had they left?

"Sorry...come...no...Overseer...honey..."

The Overseer? Freddie's eyes widened, his mind trying to solve the jigsaw puzzle of words he'd heard. Did the program have to do with the Overseer? Weren't Vault Citizens not allowed to use private terminals? What was going on?

"Whatever...good...sleep..."

A door opened and shut, then another. Freddie was left to puzzle over what he'd heard. There'd been inklings of treason before, little whispers of insurrection, but nothing that blatantly could have broken Vault law as much as this possibly good. This was something for the observation notebook, Freddie decided as he moved on to the Palmer residence to listen to the same old bullshit from Jonas and his elderly grandmother.

Nothing could top this.

Nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

The next six months were fairly uneventful. Micah avoided her father, he avoided her, they were all one big happy family - by comparison, their father-daughter relationship had improved by leaps and bounds. As long as James continued to transfer his research data to and from his private terminal and as long as Micah continued to monitor his data patterns, their relationship was hunky-dory. That didn't mean that her other relationships were going particularly well: she hadn't seen Amata or Freddie outside of class for several weeks, and Butch was getting a little more aggressive now that she was all by her lonesome. Micah would regularly come to the clinic with cuts and bruises and that's where she was on the day of the G.O.A.T.

"You sure you're going to be fine, kiddo?"

Stanley Armstrong sat in the chair opposite hers as he hacked up more blood into his hanker-chief than Micah had ever wanted to see come out of a person in her life.

"She's going to be just fine, Stanley," Jonas, who was swabbing the young girl's wounds on her arms with stinging cotton, butted in, "I'd be more worried about YOU."

"How'd it happen?"

Jonas answered for her again, "Just a little fall is all. Nothing to really worry about, but we can't have our little girl all cut up on her G.O.A.T. day, can we?"

Stanley gave a particularly nasty cough into his ragged hanker-chief. How her father could stand to be near all these...sick people, Micah didn't know. They were all so vulnerable and gross, even if they were great mechanics like Stanley. Would she end up like that? She didn't know, but she sure hoped not.

"There you go, Micah," Jonas wrapped the last bandage around her forearm and helped her back into her Vault Suit. She accepted the assistance quietly and stood up.

"Just watch where you're go-"

Stanley broke out into another fit of coughing.

Micah nodded and exited the clinic as quickly as her feet could take her, trying to ignore her former idol choking on bloody spittle. Once the door shut behind her, she released her breath. The halls were at least quieter than the clinic, other than the far off sounds of nervous teenagers making their way to the biggest test of their lives. She didn't want to admit it, but she was nervous too. The G.O.A.T. was serious business in Vault 101.

She walked a little farther along the hall and noticed a schoolbag lying - trampled and abandoned - in the middle of her path. Micah recognized it as the bag that the Overseer had requisitioned for his daughter for her birthday party not three days ago, who had been so attached to it that you'd think that they'd been sewn together like a fake pair of Siamese twins. It was odd that Amata would just leave it.

Micah's ears caught the sound of laughter and mumbling, and her brain fit the pieces together - Tunnel Snakes. Butch and his stupid little gang of Class-A sleazeballs were causing trouble with Amata again. One would think that their tiny, reptilian brains would've figured out that bullying the supreme overlord of the Vault's daughter was a bad idea.

For a second she felt guilty: were the Tunnel Snakes messing with her friend because she hadn't been there to take the hit? It took a minute to shake this thought and keep walking. Of course not. They would've picked on Amata regardless, being the neanderthals that they were. It wasn't Micah'd fault in the slightest. If anything, it was Amata's. That didn't stop her from quickening her pace to at least check up on her friend. Just to be safe, of course. In case she needed a medical professional, of course.

As Micah got closer, the laughter got louder and the mumbling got clearer.

"C'mon, Amata. How about you let me and the boys take you for a little ride? I swear it won't hurt all that much."

Butch. That slime-bag.

"I doubt I'd even feel it if it was YOU, Butch."

Micah stifled a giggle as she inched nearer.

"Shut up, you whore! Everyone knows that you ride your dad every night! I bet you wouldn't even feel it because you're so damn loose down there!"

Micah got a little closer, enough so that she could peek her head around the corner. Butch, Wally, and Paul were in a tight circle around Amata. She wobbled for a moment and then stumbled forward. Oops. Micah fell flat on her face with a crash that could wake the dead. The wounds under her bandages began to throb.

"Looks like Loser # 2 finally showed up, Butch."

Before she could even lift up her head, three boots slammed down on her back, knocking the breath right out of her.

A pair of hands suddenly yanked her up by the collar and threw her against the wall. Butch DeLoria sneered at her, his face only inches from hers. He spat on her face as he talked. The other Tunnel Snakes, as far as she could tell, were busying themselves with restraining Amata, who she hoped was putting up a good fight.

"Happy G.O.A.T. Day, fatty. Ready to suck off Brotch for another A?"

The rest of his gang gave off a round of choreographed laughter.

"Leave her alone, Butch!"

"Wally! Paul! Shut that bitch up!"

Amata squealed and screamed, and Micah hoped that someone - anyone - would hear her. But her hope was cut short as soon as Butch wrapped his fingers around her neck. Her breath began to quicken and she felt herself beginning to be unable to control her own breathing. Micah's mind raced and she did the first thing that she could think of.

Micah kicked the bastard straight in the family jewels. He let out a curse and stumbled backwards. Running entirely on pure instinct, she rushed forward and punched him as hard as she possibly could across the jaw. He fell to the ground, unconscious. With her breath still erratic, it was all Micah could do to take a quick look over at her friend - still being held in place by the other Tunnel Snakes - before sinking to the floor as well.

* * *

"Don't think that she'll be able to get away with this, you cocksucking son of a bitch! She hurt my little Butchie, and she's gonna pay!"

"Please calm down, Ms. DeLoria. We can't determine anything until the security videos are reviewed."

"I know that whore daughter of the doctor's roughed him up! I don't need any videos to prove it! The Overseer will see to it that the little bitch is strung up, you'll see!"

Then there was silence.

Micah awoke. Her head pounded and she could feel a large knot that had blossomed on the back of it. She gave a pained groan and tried to sit up. What had all that shouting been about?

Someone had apparently noticed her and had grabbed her by the shoulders, laying her gently back down into a reclining position.

"Careful now, honey. You've got a pretty nasty bump on the head there."

Micah opened her eyes and her vision swam. She felt the bile rise up in the back of her throat and vomited into a steel bowl that was hurriedly placed on her lap. After a minute or two of trying to expel her stomach out of her mouth, she had the sense of mind to take better note of her surroundings. The first thing that she saw was her father's face looking expectantly at her, and she felt the urge to vomit again - managing to choke it back down at the last second.

"Are you done? Can I take the bowl away?"

Her father smiled when she nodded and set the bowl aside, bringing out a clipboard and pencil. Micah maliciously hoped that a little bit of last night's dinner would slosh onto his pristine lab coat, but she had no such luck.

"Now, what year is it?"

She grimaced, but answered, "2274."

He checked off a box on the clipboard, "And the day?"

"August 3rd."

Another check-box, "And who's the current Overseer?"

"Alphonse Almodovar."

Her father gave her another cheery smile and squeezed her arm encouragingly. Micah desperately wanted to punch him in the face, but restrained herself.

"I've got to go check on our other patient, so try to relax while I'm gone."

He disappeared behind the screen that separated her cot from the others, and she tried to sit up again without having her head scream at her. She failed and fell back into her pillow with a huff.

Hearing mumbling on the other side of the screen, Micah tried to listen in but couldn't make anything out. She strained her ears for a few more minutes, but gave up in annoyance and started to pick at the bandages wrapped around her arms and neck. Whatever Butch or his cronies had done to her after she fainted, it couldn't have been pretty.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Jonas came up to her cot and started to fiddle with the IV that was attached to the back of her right hand, winking at her.

"I must be pretty bad if you have to pump me full of painkillers, Jonas," Micah said dully, still trying to pull up a corner of medical tape stuck to her arm.

"You've broken a rib, got some major bruising on your back, and a bump to the head. You should see the other guy." Jonas gave her a smirk, "You really did a number on Butch. You knocked out a tooth, bruised up his jaw pretty badly, even made him piss his pants. I'm sure you're very proud."

Micah bit her tongue to keep herself from telling the man in the frankest of terms to shut his mouth.

"Too bad I had to miss the G.O.A.T.. I was studying for it for months and now..."

That's the part of this whole incident that really scared her. The G.O.A.T. was essentially the one test that decided the rest of your life for you, and she'd missed it!

Jonas finished whatever he was doing with the IV bag and began to busy himself with washing his hands in a nearby sink, talking to her over his shoulder, "You'll still get a job, Micah. Just one based on the Vault's needs over your aptitude. Why, my grandmother missed her G.O.A.T. and she ended up enjoying being Nursery Manager for fifty years."

That didn't sound at all appealing to Micah, but she held her tongue once more. Hopefully, she wouldn't end up in the clinic for the rest of her life. Hopefully, the Overseer would be merciful.

The door to the clinic slid open.

Speak of the devil, and the devil shall appear.

"Where are they, Dr. Fitzgerald?"

"Both Micah and Butch are resting, my Overseer. Please-"

"I'll have none of your excuses, doctor. You have five minutes to prepare them before they are both to be brought to my office. Do I make myself clear?"

There was a long pause.

"Yes, my Overseer."

Well-heeled boots clicked away across the steel floor and the door slid closed.

Micah's heart was pounding.

The Overseer was involved?

Was Amata alright?

She tried to sit up and this time, she succeeded. Jonas helped her back into her Vault Suit for the second time that day after he disconnected her from the painkillers pumping into her veins and gave her a few pills to pop. Micah lifted herself off of the cot and clutched at his arm shakily for support. Her head was swimming but her mind was clear: it would take some major amount of bullshitting to get herself out of this one.

Shuffling past the screen and into the main room of the clinic, Micah caught sight of Butch. His jaw - just as Jonas said - looked pretty bruised and there was a little bit of dried blood running from out of the corner of his mouth. Had she really been able to knock out one of his teeth? Him? The toughest kid in the Vault? She could hardly believe it, but the nasty, blood-thirsty look - even nastier and blood-thirstier than normal - that he shot at her told the truth.

Micah Fitzgerald, nerdy unpopular girl with a weight problem, had punched out Butch DeLoria, the biggest, baddest gang leader to ever come out of the pits of Vault 101.

And it felt good.

* * *

"Mr. DeLoria. Ms. Fitzgerald," The Overseer had his back turned to the two teenagers who sat in front of his desk, "Today, you have both been charged of assaulting a fellow member of the Vault, one of them being my very daughter. Is there anything that you'd like to confess before I expose it for you?"

"I didn't touch Amata, sir!" Micah wriggled in her chair and tried to keep her composure the best that she could, "I was trying to help her, I swear! It was Butch and his friends, honest!"

The boy to her left said nothing, but she could tell that throwing him under the bus wouldn't earn her any brownie points later. She had to play her cards right, and she'd just showed her whole hand up front.

"Duly noted, Ms. Fitzgerald. Anything you'd like to add, Mr. DeLoria?'

Butch wrinkled his nose and spat, "Only that I hope that this little bitch gets what's coming to her."

"Watch your language, Mr. DeLoria. We are not in the unruly classroom of your insipid schoolteacher."

The Overseer turned around, his eyes cold and dark. His hand was clasped around a holotape, which he handed over the security guard on his right. His eyes never left Micah's face, and she wished that she had that steel bowl with her again.

"This," the Overseer said as the security guard inserted the holotape into a projector and turned it on, "is the security footage of the incident. Let's review it together."

The security footage began with Amata walking down the hall alone. After a few seconds of sped-up footage, the Tunnel Snakes appeared from around the corner and grabbed her, dragging her to the wall and pinning her there. Micah began to feel sick again and hoped that it wouldn't get any worse. After a couple more sped-up seconds, Micah saw herself fall flat on her face and the Tunnel Snakes stomp on her back - the playback of it looked a little less painful than it actually felt. Then came Butch trying to choke her and her kicking and punching him into submission before she fell again. The other Tunnel Snakes' grips seemed to slacken, as Amata was able to run away while they stood in place like morons for a few minutes and then ran away as well.

The footage stopped, and Micah wondered why she was in the Overseer's Office. Didn't they just SEE that she was defending herself? Didn't they just SEE that she had nothing to do with Amata getting assaulted?

"As you can see, we have clear evidence that you've both committed crimes against the Vault. Now, the question is what to do about it."

Micah couldn't take it anymore, all of the comments and emotions that she had to hold back throughout this entire incident just spilled out.

"But I didn't DO ANYTHING! It was SELF-DEFENSE! SELF-DEFENSE! SELF-DEFENSE!"

She sprung out of her chair and the Vault Security Guards had to wrestle her back down again. She could feel both Butch's and the Overseer's eyes glaring at her. Micah's face was flushed and red, her eyes were bulging, her hands clenched into fists.

"Calm yourself, Ms. Fitzgerald. Regardless of your attack being in self-defense or not, this is your second violation of Vault law in the past six months. Any and all assaults on another member of the Vault are to be taken seriously and punished severely."

Butch gave a derisive snort, and the Overseer turned to him with a harsh tone in his voice, "Don't think that you are getting off lightly, Mr. DeLoria. Are you not the ringleader of the little gang that just tried to assault my daughter? Do you not also have a record of assault? I would suggest that you keep your childish dislike of Ms. Fitzgerald to yourself."

The bile in Micah's throat rose again, threatening to spew onto the Overseer's desk with the pressure of a Pre-War fire hose.

"Now, let's get to the manner of your punishment, shall we?" The Overseer addressed them generally now. "For the transgression of assaulting a fellow Vault Citizen while having a previous record of the same, you are hereby barred from taking the Vault 101 G.O.A.T., and are to be sorted into your professions by the needs of the Vault alone. Also, you have both been put on half-rations and will be placed under a strict curfew until such time at which you can be trusted to travel the Vault without trying to injure your fellow Citizens."

Micah was dumbfounded. She got the same punishment as HIM. The same punishment as the person who was going to SEXUALLY ASSAULT the daughter of the supreme Overseer of the Vault? It could't be. It just couldn't.

"Gentlemen," the Overseer turned away from the teenagers dramatically as he spoke to the guards that flanked either side of his desk, "please escort these young Citizens back to their apartments."

Micah was yanked unceremoniously out of her chair and out of the Overseer's office, still completely stunned. This was a miscarriage of justice! A travesty! A complete mistake! All of that studying, all of that classwork and homework and schoolwork was for nothing! Nothing! She was nothing! Nothing!

As she was forcibly led back to her apartment, Micah cried.

* * *

No matter how much she scrubbed and scratched and begged, Micah could never get the stench of garbage off of her. It had sunk into her skin and her teeth and her hair over the past three years of working in the Garbage Recycling Unit. After she'd been disqualified from taking the G.O.A.T., the only place left to work was down in the "trash pits", which mostly involved unclogging recycling chutes and supervising the reprocessing vats. It would have been a horrible job already - what with the lack of intellectual challenge and the public ridicule that came with being a glorified trash man - but the Overseer saw it fit to assign Butch DeLoria to the same job as well, despite his mother's strong protests against it. So not only was she working one of the worst jobs in the Vault, she also had to do it with her violent childhood bully as well. To say the least, Micah was not a happy camper.

There were the little things that made it bearable though. Through the three years she worked the graveyard shift, she was able to travel the Vault with relative freedom - having been given special security privileges to perform jobs almost anywhere in the unrestricted floors and areas. Unfortunately, she always had to take Butch along with her, who used most of this time to insult or otherwise belittle her. But she was usually able to lose him in the maze of the Vault's corridors, which took some of the edge off. Over the years, Micah had developed a keen sense of how the Vault was laid out and was able to navigate even in the low lights after curfew. Along with this, she was able to get access to a greater array of tools than she had ever had before, including her beloved buzz saw un-creatively named Mr. Buzz. With these, she got a greater knowledge of repair than she could have ever gotten simply working by herself on salvaged electronics and stolen faulty food processors. The mechanical aspect of her job kept her interested enough to make the days pass fairly quickly, and it was a secret source of pride for her to be more proficient at doing her job than Butch was. Life wasn't exactly good, but it was passable.

Of course, she kept up-to-date on her father's goings-on, even if the rebellious haze of youth had left her. Recently, he'd been making a lot of audio files and storing them on whatever terminal he was using, but that's all she could tell without a proper monitoring device. Her father had seen it fit to confiscate her personal terminal a few years back, and she had silently let it happen with just a token resistance to keep up appearances. After all, Micah didn't need a terminal to monitor his activities, considering that she'd gotten much better at creating home-brew programs on her Pip-Boy to serve the same purposes. But it was still a point of pride that she had to still be under her father's rules, as all unmarried citizens of the Vault had to live within their family groups to conserve on space. Still, it was easy to let some of the small things pass by - if just to make life a little bit easier.

Micah had just finished working her eight p.m. to two a.m. shift when she got home on the night that would change her life forever. Her father was either asleep or still in the clinic, she didn't really care. Everything was unimportant at two a.m., other than the gnawing need for sleep. She flopped into bed almost immediately and snuggled deep into her fraying blanket, watched over by soft glow of her Pip-Boy's screen. Micah was asleep before she knew it, but it wouldn't last for long.

She wasn't really even dreaming yet when a shrill voice sliced through the cloudiness of her sleep and woke her up.

"Micah! Micah! Wake up, you fat sack of lard!"

Micah rolled over, pulling her blanket down from her chin, and opened an eye blearily. A figure swam into focus.

"Amata?"

The young woman stood over her, hands shaking and eyes frantically darting back and forth.

"Get up! Get up!"

Her voice was cracking and squeaking as she spoke in a hurried whisper. Micah sat up and gave a grumble.

"Haven't seen you in a while," she muttered before picking the gunk out of her eyes and wiping it on her Vault-issued sleepwear, "Do you think that you can just show up at-" she looked at her Pip-Boy, "-four a.m. and just expect me to play tea party with you or something?"

Amata's nose crinkled as she gave her a sour frown before returning to her manic state. Micah thought she could hear alarms going off down the hall in the resulting silence.

"This isn't the time for funny stuff, okay?! I'm here to help!"

There it was again, the sirens. This piqued her interests. If it was just a routine drill going on outside, why had Amata come to her room in such a way, let alone visit her at all? She looked down at her Pip-Boy again and saw a message from the Overseer. Amata noticed her friend's movements and grabbed her hand before she could open it.

"Don't open that, Micah! There's a virus in it designed to shut down your Pip-Boy! My father doesn't want anyone - especially you - being able to use them until-"

"Until what?" Micah was genuinely fearful now and grabbed at the other woman's hands when she didn't answer immediately, "Until what, Amata?"

Amata shook her head and took her hands out of Micah's grasp. This action seemed to shake her whole body as well - everything that wasn't already, at least.

"It's...it's about your dad, Micah."

Micah's eyes widened. She knew what that could mean.

"Is he alright? Is he safe? What happened? What happened?"

Amata shook again and answered, "I don't know if he's safe or not, Micah. I don't even know where he is. But...but I know he's not here anymore."

"Not here anymore? Not in this room? Not in this apartment? Not...not in the Vault?"

She nodded her head at the last one, and Micah nearly tripped on her bedding trying to stand up. Not in the Vault? That was insane. No one ever left the Vault, never. It wasn't safe. It wasn't sane. But it was exactly something that her father would do.

"Look," Amata said as Micah fumbled with putting on her jumpsuit, "I know that this is really sudden but-" she reached to pull something out of the loop of her belt, "-I want you to have this."

It was a gun. A real gun, with live rounds and everything. It might of just been a 10 mm pistol, but Micah recoiled in terror. What was Amata doing with THAT?

"Here," Amata turned the gun around and offered the butt of it to her friend, "I could only find one clip, but..."

Tears began to fall down her cheeks, but her face remained just as stern as ever. Micah finished zipping up her jumpsuit and moved away from the other woman.

"I just want you to be safe. You're my best friend, even if we haven't acted like it these past years, and I want you to be safe. Even if it means-"

Micah interrupted her, "I'm not taking that gun, Amata. There's nothing in the world you could tell me to make me take that gun. This will all blow over, I promise. We don't need to do this."

Amata's face crumpled and she lashed out angrily through her tears, "Just take it! I went through all this trouble to warn you and bring it to you and keep you safe! You better take it! This isn't a game, and this isn't going to just blow over! You're going to die out there! My father wants you dead! So just take it!"

She thrust the butt of the gun into the other's hands, and Micah took it reluctantly. It felt so much...colder than her BB gun, so much...deadlier.

"You better go," Amata sniffed as she tried to dry her tears, "I only made it here thanks to luck, but there's bound to be security guards everywhere..."

Micah stepped forward. With a single motion, she pulled her lifelong friend into the one and only hug they'd ever shared.

"Thank you."

* * *

After a careful cleaning out of the apartment of any and all things that could be useful, Micah came up with two stimpacks from the medical kit on the wall, her BB gun with a total of about fifty pellets, her toolbox, and a drawstring bag that held a few bottles of water and about a meal's worth of food. Amata had scurried away a few minutes prior and now Micah was all alone. The sirens were still going off, and she could have sworn that there was far away shouting when she exited her apartment. She ducked into the public bathroom opposite and came face-to-face with a pack of three radroaches. What they were doing so far up in the Vault, she didn't know, but all it took was a few stomps from her boots to take them down.

The sound of her attacking the radroaches must have been loud to attract attention, as she could hear someone draw nearer. Micah took her BB gun off of her back and steadied her sights on the door leading out of the bathroom. There was only the dripping of faucets and the sound of footsteps to steel her nerves, but that's all it took. She was ready to attack whomever entered that door, hopefully startling them enough to make her escape.

"Halt in the name of the Overseer!"

Micah heard someone shout from behind her and she turned around just fast enough to get a face full of baton. She felt blood trickle down her face and her eyes stung with pain. Her glasses went flying off of her face and her BB gun was knocked out of her hands and onto the floor. She, in her ignorance, had not taken into account the door she had entered from as a potential threat and was now paying the price as another strike from the baton threatened to crack her jaw. She panicked and made a move to un-holster her gun. Her attacker, who she could hardly see without her glasses and through the haze of pain, hesitated for a moment in his assault. That was just enough time for one of the radroaches Micah thought dead to go for his throat.

There was a spurt of blood as the insect tore through his jugular vein before the man - at least she thought it was a man - fell to his knees and slumped over. The radroach continued to tear into the soft flesh of his neck, and Micah looked away from the gruesome scene to vomit into one of the nearby toilets. She retrieved her glasses and picked her BB gun back up. As she slid her glasses back onto her face, her nose twinged in pain and Micah touched it with a careful finger. It was definitely broken, but not swelling yet.

With the danger gone for a moment, she turned her eyes back on her former attacker, upon whom the radroach was feeding with gusto. She was glad that it had not gone for her throat instead, but she couldn't help but feel sorry for the man - who was still moaning and screaming in agony, having not died yet. She brought out her 10 mm pistol and fired two shots - one hit its intended target, the radroach, and the other bounced off of the steel behind the man's head and into the hallway. She fumbled with the gun again and let off another two rounds, both of which missed. The man let out another strangled moan, and Micah recognized him as Officer Kendall - the father of one of her old classmates. She let off one more shot and this one hit its mark, barreling through the poor man's head and sticking there. He gave a short gasp and his eyes rolled back into his head, the telltale entry wound of her bullet right above them.

Micah vomited again. Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she turned her back to the grisly scene and moved on - the weight of her first human kill heavy on her shoulders. It took a couple of minutes, but she finally managed to stop dry heaving enough to move at a decent pace down the back routes through the apartments. Her nose ached under the light pressure that her glasses were putting on it, but she tried to ignore it. She kept her pistol safely holstered in her belt and turned the safety back on.

With her footsteps pounding heavily on the steel floor of the Vault, she was surprised that the noise she was making wasn't attracting any more guards.

_Maybe they thought I was weak enough to dispatch with just one guard._

This thought was broken when she heard screaming down the hall. It didn't sound like a security guard. Was the Overseer ordering them to hunt down other citizens of the Vault too? She crept slowly up around a dividing wall between the two halves of the hallway, trying to remain as covert as possible. If someone was really in trouble, she didn't want any part of it - as horrible as that sounded.

Someone ran out of one of the nearby apartments, and she pulled out her gun. If it was a guard, she wasn't going to let them get the drop on her again. But it wasn't a guard, it was Mr. Butch DeLoria, looking as haggard and stressed as she had ever seen him. His hair fell flat on his face without any pomade in it, and he looked like he had just woken up and slapped on his leather jacket.

Micah's stealth skills must have not have been as up to snuff as she had thought because he noticed her instantly.

"Hey!"

The screams were louder in his direction.

She readied her weapon. If Butch fucking DeLoria wanted to pull a fight here, she'd have to at least scare him off.

He ran towards her before he noticed her gun. He backed up and put up his hands, and Micah thought it safe enough to stand up and face him. He didn't seem armed in any case.

"Whoa! Whoa! Put that thing down and let's talk, okay?"

Butch's voice was fearful and shaky, but she didn't lower her gun. She didn't even answer him. It was do-or-die and after her first kill, Micah was ready to fight God Himself to get out of this damn Vault.

"L-Look, no weapons." He pulled out his pockets and opened his jacket to show her, "I-I'm not going to tr-try to hurt you. I-I...I need your help."

Micah's hands trembled, the 10 mm in them beginning to falter.

"What kind of help?"

The screams continued in the background, and Butch looked over his shoulder fearfully. What was going on over there?

"It's my mom. There's radroaches. Lots of them. I don't have anything to fight them off with so I need your help!"

"No deal. I have my own problems to worry about, because in case you haven't noticed, there's a whole army of Vault Security guards after me!"

She shouted this and raised her gun to aim at his head. Her vision swam. Too much, too much, too much pressure. Too much screaming, too much death, too much pressure.

"I'm sorry, alright?"

Something inside Micah snapped.

"'Sorry'? SORRY?! YOU'RE ONLY SAYING THAT BECAUSE I HAVE A GUN, BECAUSE I'M IN CONTROL OF YOUR MOTHER'S LIFE, BECAUSE I CAN KILL YOU! YOU CAN SHOVE THAT 'SORRY' STRAIGHT UP YOUR ASS, DELORIA!"

There were more screaming sobs coming from behind Butch and she couldn't take it anymore. She just couldn't take it.

"HERE!"

Micah screeched as loud as she could, got the BB gun off of her back, and threw it as hard as she could at him. He remarkably caught it, but was pushed off balance and fell to the ground. She threw the extra canister of pellets at him as well, which snapped open on impact and showered them both with a stinging rain.

Unable to stand there any longer, Micah ran off as fast as she could down the hallway, away from Butch and his shrieking mother. Somewhere deep inside, she knew that she'd done the right thing the wrong way.

* * *

Stanley was dead when she got to the clinic, his head caved in and radroaches feeding on his corpse. Micah didn't even bother to shoot the little beasts anymore. She knew that she had to conserve ammunition and nothing that she could do to those radroaches would ever bring back her former idol. This she knew. She ran past the sounds of a firefight, past security guards with their batons and guns, past everyone and everything in her way. She was done with killing, done with screaming, done with this whole entire Vault.

"Micah? Micah!"

Someone shouted after her and she didn't - couldn't - stop running, even as her lungs began to burn and her legs caught on fire and her heart couldn't stop pounding with the animalistic, primal urge to /run, /run, /run. She dropped to the ground, her knees finally giving way to the pain in her chest.

"Micah!"

Micah was breathing heavily, her breath coming in fast and shallow. Her whole body screamed in pain from years of misuse. Whoever was calling after her was catching up, and she barely had the energy to take the gun out of her belt. If this was how she was going to die, she was going to die fighting.

"Micah! It's me, Freddie!"

She hadn't seen Freddie in years, literally. The boy had practically disappeared after graduation. Rumor had it that he was working in maintenance, but that had never been substantiated. Rumor also had it that he was fond of creeping in the air vents at night and spying on people, but that too was never found to be true. She kept her hand on her gun.

In a few seconds, the boy - more of a young man now - came into view, huffing and puffing around the corner like the Big Bad Wolf from a story she'd heard on holotape as a kid. He also hadn't been working out apparently, as his forehead was shining with sweat and his cheeks red with exertion.

"Micah!" He said through his own labored breathing, "I'm...so...glad...I...found...you..."

Micah didn't say anything in return, trying desperately to get up on her jelly legs but to no avail. All that accomplished was her falling flat on her face and damaging her broken nose even further. She bit back a scream of pain.

"I...know...a...way...you can...avoid...the guards..."

If it was anyone else, she would've suspected some sort of trap, but she knew that Freddie knew all sorts of ways around the Vault - some that even she didn't. If anything, it was worth a shot. But she still held onto her gun.

Once their breathing got back to normal and after a few seconds of embarrassed and awkward silence, Freddie helped Micah to her feet and led her around a corner, through the Atrium, and into an abandoned utility closet.

"I found this...uh..." he blushed as he jimmied open a vent, "...when I was working. This'll take you straight to the Vault door..."

The vent was barely big enough for her to go through without getting stuck, but it would work. She gave Freddie her first smile in the past three years.

"Thanks."

"Just find your dad and... uh...be safe."

"I will."

* * *

Micah crawled on her belly through the vent, sliding upwards towards the top of the Vault. She heard all sorts of things on her way up: mostly screaming and crying and cursing. She even smelt smoke coming from one of the vents, but kept moving. No one would want her to be their hero, and she didn't want be either. She knew that she got to the right level when she heard the Overseer's cool and calm voice speaking gently below her.

"Now Amata, I don't want Officer Mack to hurt you, but he will if you don't tell me where your little friend went. If you do, you can leave and go back to sleep, and you won't have to worry about them ever again."

"D-Dad...why are you doing this?"

That was Amata, sounding just as scared as she did when Micah saw her last. From what she could tell through the slots in the vent, she hadn't been roughed up too badly.

"Because I want to keep you safe, Amata. Because I want to keep everyone safe. And your friend made everyone unsafe. Do you see it yet?"

"It's not her fault! Don't punish her for what her dad did!"

"If not her, who will I punish? Her father is long gone, and the Citizens of the Vault will want retribution for his treachery. Don't you see? I'm sacrificing one life to save the hundreds of the Vault safe and sound. Isn't that worth it?"

"Not if it's her."

"Officer Mack, if you please."

There was a loud smack, and Micah could hear Amata cry out in pain.

"Again, Officer Mack."

It was louder this time, both the smack and the cry.

Micah lay there, listening in horror as her best friend - her only true friend left in the world - was beaten with a baton by Officer Mack. What should she do? What would anyone do?

After a minute or so, the baton stopped and Amata gave a moan of relief.

"Will you tell me now, Amata?"

"...No."

The Overseer gave an exasperated sigh and said as though he were dealing with a child's tantrum, "Again. Not around the face this time."

Micah lay there for a moment and then did what came naturally - she continued on, leaving her one and only friend behind.

* * *

Micah stole the holotape off of Jonas' lifeless body. He had been shot multiple times in the chest and blood still oozed out of his wounds. She felt a little bad about not paying her respects, but she only had a limited amount of time before the Overseer tired of having his thug smack his daughter around and before he came in to find her snooping around.

There was a key in the desk and it opened the door to the Overseer's office, which she had only seen once before. It looked just the same as it had done back then, and she got to work hacking into his terminal.

_There must be an escape route or something SOMEWHERE._

After several tries, she finally cracked the password. It was "Amata". As vaguely touching as that was, there was no time to dwell on it. Now that it was no longer blocked by the Vault's security, Micah scanned off the data from the Overseer's terminal into her Pip-Boy for later analysis. Then, she found it. A single application entitled: "ES-1". She ran it, and lo and behold, the floor began to shake.

She rushed over to the Overseer's desk as it collapsed into the floor and revealed a staircase. Sirens went off, and she knew it was only a matter of time before the Overseer would find her.

With lightning in her heels, Micah rushed off down the stairs and down, down towards the exit to the one place she had ever known.

* * *

It only took a few minutes to get to the control panel for the door, but she knew that she had little time before Vault Security would find her. Pulling down the levers in sync, she felt the door began to move. Eagerly awaiting its opening, she rushed forward and waited until there was a large enough space to slip through. But luck left her side when she felt a bullet pierce her left shoulder. She screamed and fell to her knees. Blood welled up in the wound and she felt it run down the back of her jumpsuit.

Micah turned around and saw three guards advancing towards her. She was so close to freedom that she could almost taste it, almost feel it on her skin. The door opened a little more and Micah slipped through, trying desperately to not jar or jiggle her shoulder too much and failing. She ran down the rocky corridor, crunching the long since picked clean pre-war bones that littered the ground. There was a slatted door at the end, and the light shining through already hurt her eyes even more than the bullet had hurt her shoulder.

She felt another bullet whiz past her and break through the wooden slats of the door.

With trembling hands and quickness of breath, Micah flung open the gate between heaven and hell.


	6. Chapter 6

When Micah stepped out into light, she was instantly reminded of a little trick Amata pulled on her when they were children. Amata punched her in the arm and convinced her that the pain would go away if Micah were kicked in the leg as well.

"You can only focus on one pain at a time," she had said with a cunning smile before giving her friend a sharp tap to the kneecap with her foot. It was at moment that Micah knew never to trust her best friend when it came to such matters.

It was a silly little memory, a silly little thought to have, but that was all she could think of when the world around her exploded into light and felt agonizing pain. Her eyes seemed to boil in their sockets, her shoulder stabbed at her, and her nose oozed with gushing, painful fluid. It was as if the universe wanted to remind her that you could indeed feel more than one pain at a time.

Micah began to shriek and scream, her mouth feeling as though it was ripping open at the seams. She stumbled backward and tripped, falling into a puddle of warm water that hadn't been there a moment before. She howled again as a rusty spike - possibly from some abandoned car or bicycle - tore through the leg of her jumpsuit. She didn't feel any scratching or tearing of her leg though, so there were some small pleasures. The last thing she needed was a case of tetanus.

Her glasses did nothing but magnify the light beating down on her, and Micah threw them off of her face - painfully shifting her broken nose as she did so - in a pained fit. This did little to help, other than to deprive her of actually being able to see as her eyes adjusted to the harsh brightness of the light.

With her eyes beginning to adjust, Micah stood up shakily, trying to keep her shoulder as still as possible. Her glasses had shattered against a nearby rock, as far as she could tell without them, and the torn leg of her jumpsuit fluttered slightly in the light breeze - something fairly novel to a girl used to the static air of an underground nuclear bunker.

She was standing on a broken length of road and down the hill were burned out buildings and other signs of civilization. For a moment, she puzzled over why the trees were still standing two hundred years after the Great War and why the buildings were still recognizable, but these weren't productive thoughts and so she pushed them away.

First things, first: time to scout out the area.

* * *

The people of Megaton heard the screaming coming from the Vault, but none of them paid it any mind. None of them except the nastier elements of the town, who made a mental note to scavenge whatever crap the poor doomed sack of shit had on them when they died, provided the raiders of Springfield Elementary didn't get to the corpse first.

One of these nastier elements went by the name of Shell, and she gave a half-laugh, half-cough at the thought of some bitch getting torn a new one by some molerat or yao-guai. She kicked her feet up on the outside bar of the Brass Lantern and got a dirty look from the ugly whore - Jenny Stahl - running the place, to which she responded with a vulgar gesture.

"Nothing like some townie getting snacked on to start off your morning, huh?! Hope it was that skank, Nova! That'd show her!"

She let off another peal of coughing laughter and thumped her chest to dislodge some of the mucus caught in her lungs before taking another swig of her whiskey. Years of smoking, huffing, and other poor life choices had not done her body good, but that was of no importance to her. Shell went by the lifestyle of "Past Me screwed me over and Future Me is a sucker who deserves to get screwed over". And nothing followed that like drinking at seven 'o clock in the morning and planning to go around back to Leo to huff some Jet afterwards.

"Can you just shut up for a goddamn minute, Shell?!"

That was her employer, Crazy Wolfgang - junk salesman extraordinaire. She was his part-time bodyguard, part-time hookup, and full-time pain in the ass. Shell snorted derisively.

"You think that Nova will give you a discount or something for defending her honor? She's probably had so many guys today that by the time you get your flea-bitten ass down there, she'll be looser than a mother molerat!"

Her boss took a sip of his Nuka Cola and said, "I'm not paying you to talk trash about the locals, Shell. I'm paying you to keep my 'flea-bitten ass' safe from your old raider pals. Either you shut up when I tell you to, or I'll have you back in that ditch I found you in so fast that your tits will spin!"

Shell's eyes narrowed as she finished her bottle in a single gulp and said a little shakily, "Whatever. And it was a pit, not a ditch."

The only reason why she was kept around was because she happened to be old raiding buddies with most of the rowdier wasteland types in the area, and she knew it too. There was only a certain amount of lip you could get away with and still expect free drinks, even with somebody who pretended to be a madman for a living.

"You wanna check out them screams?" Shell mumbled, signalling for another whiskey from the Stahl sister who looked at her with exasperation, "Might be some good loot. Some good junk."

Crazy Wolfgang sighed and said, "We don't have the time. I've only got one more day on my merchant's pass before I have to pay for another one, and I'm not about to waste it going after some wastelander that got screwed over. If you want to do that on your own time, fine by me."

He turned to Jenny Stahl with a tired grin and pushed away Shell's unopened bottle of whiskey away from her, "Can you put it on our tab?"

The woman, who was rubbing the rusty steel countertop with a greasy rag, frowned at him and pointed to a scribble of white paint on the wall behind her that read "Absolutely NO tabs".

"Looks like this is a job for Shell, huh?"

The former raider casually stood up, pushed her stool back under the bar, and - quick as a flash - reached over the bar and pulled the other woman over it, knocking over several empty shot glasses and pushing a few of them over the edge to shatter on the ground. Shell immediately began to slam Jenny Stahl's face into the countertop, over and over again. Jenny screamed and tried to claw at the strong arms that gripped her head with unimaginable force for someone who had just downed three bottles of alcohol within the span of fifteen minutes.

"Stop that, you crazy bitch!" Her boss shouted this without a hint of irony in his voice.

One of the Stahl brothers - Andy - came running out of the Brass Lantern with a shotgun at his hip.

"Get her to let go of my sister, Wolfgang, or you'll be hiring a new raider scumbag to protect you."

Andy lifted the shotgun to aim at Shell's head, and she dropped his sister's head, letting it crash into the bar one last time. The woman staggered back and fell to the ground, her face a bloody and broken mess.

"Now," Andy Stahl said gravely and slowly, "I suggest that you leave before the Sheriff drops by and hauls the both of you away."

Crazy Wolfgang held up his hands and inched away from the scene, beckoning Shell to follow him, "Sure. Sure. No problem here. We'll get right on that, won't we Shell?"

She nodded with a defiant look in her eye and moved away from the Brass Lantern with a prideful walk. She made another rude gesture before Andy Stahl lifted up his shotgun again.

"Kicked out of Megaton, and still with junk to sell! Could this day get any worse?"

* * *

All around her was the sound of drums. It was raining in the Capital Wasteland. Micah had taken shelter in the cellar of one of the bombed-out houses, which had not been unoccupied - a few radroaches skittered away when she had opened the door but had not attacked. She sat on the sturdiest wooden crate and when that crumbled under both her own and time's weight, she stood - motionless - in the dark. It felt like dreaming, just being enveloped by the dank, cold air of the cellar, and Micah felt herself drift off into the swirling emptiness. It was time for thinking, time for understanding, time for a plan.

For all of her concentration on the problem at hand, Micah couldn't help but think of those she'd left behind - Amata, Freddie, even Butch and his gang of goons. Was it really going to be alright for them to stay in the Vault with a crazed Overseer? Was it really her father's fault that the Overseer had gone insane? That was when her thoughts shifted. Her father's fault. That seemed logical. That made sense. Of course it was her father's fault. He had, after all, been dabbling in illegal activities for quite some time before the..."incident", and it was probably only a matter of time before he was caught. No doubt he had been discovered and had fled the Vault in fear of the Overseer's reprisal. But as logical as it was, Micah hoped beyond hope that her father had not been in the wrong and this confused her.

Her shoulder and her nose still pained her agonizingly, and Micah found herself losing her train of thought often as she floated off into dwelling on her injuries. The only medical supplies that she had been able to scavenge from her apartment were a couple of stimpacks, which would do no good for a broken nose and a bullet embedded in her shoulder. So there was really nothing for her to do but just live in that pain, experience it to the fullest and lick her wounds like an injured animal in the dark.

The radroaches scuttled somewhere behind her, and she moved to climb the rotting stairs back up to the surface.

Then, there were footsteps.

Micah paused.

Human? Animal? Something else?

Then, there was talking.

"This fucking rain is pissing me off, Frankie. I don't know why the boss wanted us to scout out this place anyways. There's not a caravan coming to town for another three weeks, and we've already picked this place dry."

It was a man's voice, thin and reedy with a distinctive timbre that could only have belonged to a heavy smoker. Micah retreated further into the cellar, moving backwards towards the back wall and keeping as far away from the entrance as she possibly could. The radroaches seemed to have a similar idea, as she had accidentally crushed one's head underfoot - the dying insect let out a death screech.

"You hear that, Frankie?"

"I didn't hear nothing."

This second voice was deeper and more even, but still carried that same tone that one only gets from one's lungs dying and decaying within them.

"It sounded like a radroach, man."

"So?"

The door to the cellar swung open, and Micah heard the footsteps descend down the stairs towards her. She ducked down to avoid the revealing light, trying to ignore the protests of her shoulder as she did so.

"It sounded like a dying radroach, man."

The door to the cellar was closed, and they were engulfed in comforting darkness once more.

"So?"

"What do you think eats radroaches?"

"Everything, you fucking idiot. WE eat radroaches, Benny. And there ain't nothing that can take us down anyways. Ain't no ant, ain't no molerat, ain't no fucking townie."

There was a click and then there was light. One of the men had turned on a battery-powered lamp, and Micah could see the two of them clearly. They looked just as diseased and ugly as she had ever imagined them to be - flaps of skin peeling off of their bodies, bloodshot eyes, scars running down the lengths of their torsos, ripped and dirtied clothing that clung to them the bark of a dead tree. They were nearly indistinguishable in the dim light that the lamp provided, but the one thing that she could see was the glint of guns - hunting rifles by the looks of them - strapped across both men's backs. They were only sitting on the ground a few feet away from where Micah was hiding, and she felt her heart begin to burst in fear.

"Guess you're right. At least we got out of that fucking rain. Can't believe we got stuck out in the sticks on patrol duty. We're some of the smartest guys the bossman has! We're some of the best guys the bossman has! We should be back at the school being treated like gods!"

The other man only grunted in response.

Micah twitched and tried to creep towards the door. Maybe if she was able to get out of the cellar quick enough, she'd be able to run or hide or-

"Now I know that I hear something now, Frankie."

"I heard it too. Probably another radroach."

She moved slowly along the side of the wall, crawling at as quick of a pace that she dared. Her foot collided with the side of an old tin can, and she had to restrain herself from swearing.

"Give a moment."

"What you doing?"

"I wanna shoot this motherfucker so he'll shut the fuck up."

"Fine. Knock yourself out."

Micah wanted to squeal or cry or bang her fists like a child denied a new toy. But she couldn't. The man took the rifle off of his back and cocked it.

"Come on out, you little bastard. Uncle Benny ain't going to hurt you none."

The man chuckled darkly, and Micah would have pissed herself if she hadn't already done so earlier. This was the end, the big one, the final curtain call. If she had anything witty to say, she would have said it then and just let the man shoot her. Better to go out with a clever one-liner than with nothing at all.

"Come out, come out. I've got a little present for you."

Micah was tempted to reveal herself and just get the whole ordeal over with. All it would take was a bullet to the brain or to the heart and bam! Off to Hell with her.

"Don't waste your time, Benny. I think the rain's stopped. Back to patrol."

"I really want to waste the little fucker. Just another minute. I'm sure he'll show up."

"Forget the fucking radroach. We've got patrol duty, and I'm gonna rat you out to Boss if you keep fucking around."

"Whatever. I'm going, I'm going."

The men clicked off their little lamp, and Micah heard their footsteps climb back up the stairs. The door to the cellar opened and closed. She was safe - for now.

Micah felt like she could breathe again, even in the dank and dirty air of the cellar. She checked the time on her Pip-Boy and waited fifteen minutes. Better safe than sorry. Then, she quietly crawled up the stairs to the cellar door as well, opening it as timidly and silently as she could.

The light stung at her eyes at bit, but it was nowhere near the pain she had felt when she had first stepped out of the Vault. She moved forward, up the stairs, and back into the wasteland that lay before her.

At least the little brush with danger had answered one of her questions: there were indeed humans living on the outside, and they were dangerous.

Micah would soon discover just how dangerous they really were.

* * *

Shell fired off a few rounds into the molerat's skull, more out of boredom than anything else.

"Stop wasting ammo. We've got to spend the whole night out here, maybe a whole week, because of your stupid shit in there."

Crazy Wolfgang faced the campfire and poked at the flames sullenly. The sun had gone down on the Capital Wasteland and the intrepid duo were camped out under a rocky outcropping, shielded from the cold winds that blew from the east. They could still see the lights of Megaton from their encampment, which only made their blood boil - albeit for different reasons.

The woman let out a sigh and lowered her rifle, taking a seat opposite of her employer. Her fingers fiddled with her matted black hair, trying to comb out those stubborn tangles. Soon growing tired of this, she reached into the brahmin leather satchel around her waist and pulled out a small bottle of rum. It was a good year - 2071 - and she downed it quickly.

This made her companion wrinkle his nose in disgust and say accusingly, "I can't believe you're still able to drink after all those shots you had down in Megaton. I swear, I spend more money cleaning up after your drunk ass than I actually spend paying you."

Shell just shrugged and grimaced at him. Her hand went digging for alcohol and she said, "What I do on my off-time is none of your business, Wolfgang. Who honestly gives a shit if I drink? Not me."

She found her prize and gave a coo of contentment. It was only a tiny bottle of vodka and not very good vodka at that, but her insatiable desire for that beautiful burning sensation compelled her to love it all the same.

"It's disgusting." Wolfgang said, poking a little more at the fire and watching it sputter and gasp as he did so, "You're always either drinking or shooting up chems. I don't even remember why I hired you in the first place."

Shell laughed heartily, her alcoholic binge starting to affect her.

"It's simple. I can do this -" She mimed cocking a gun and shooting something far off in the distance, "And I can do this -" She made a vulgar hand gesture that deserves no description, "That's about it."

Her employer gave a little smile and turned his head back to watching the campfire.

"I suppose so," he said, "Anyways, you got any Jet or something on you?"

She smiled broadly, showing off her blackened and missing teeth, and dug around her in her bag, pulling out what looked like a couple of Pre-War inhalers that she'd seen on a billboard outside of D.C. once. She passed one over to Wolfgang and kept one for herself. She also popped a few tablets of Buffout, just for flavor.

The next few minutes (that might have been hours) were a blur for them both, but when they came to their senses later, they both agreed that there were indeed loud footsteps and the cocking of guns during their drug induced haze. The next thing they remembered was their pack brahmin's head exploding and the sound of gunfire coming from two sides.

It took them a couple of seconds to react, but that was long enough for Wolfgang to have a bullet chew through the flesh of his stomach. He howled, and Shell high-tailed it for the hills. Her brain felt fuzzy, and her legs wobbled and stumbled. There was an aching feeling that she had betrayed her duty as a bodyguard but at this point, she didn't care. Shell tripped forward and hit someone, another body moving in behind her.

"Evening, Shell. Fancy meeting you here." The man in front of her said in a cool even tone.

"Yeah, evening." The man behind her said, his voice so fast that his words were more of a jumble than a sentence.

Shell felt the barrels of two rifles dig into her back and into her stomach. She smirked. She recognized _these_ two.

"You compensating for something, Benny?" She said, "And how about you, Frankie? I know that you and I used to -"

Both rifles slammed in, knocking the wind out of her. She fell to the ground at their feet, her mind a haze of pain and drugs.

"The boss doesn't want you around these parts no more," Frankie said before he spat on her twitching form.

She could hear the cock of a rifle. She rose to her feet slowly with no sudden movements. A man - or a woman, for that matter - with a gun was a dangerous animal and should be treated as such. That's what her mother had always said, anyways.

"If you're going to kill me," Shell said, "then just do it."

The men laughed, a cackling and crow-like cry.

"We're not gonna kill you, Shellie," Benny said from behind her, rubbing the barrel of his gun into her lower back and making it sting, "You're just going on a little trip. Yeah, a little trip to Paradise Falls..."

Shell's eyes widened, "No! Anything but Paradise Falls! C'mon you guys! I'll make a deal! Any kind of deal! C'mon!"

Frankie gave her a rotten toothed smile and shoved his gun into her stomach.

"Move along now." He said, "Move along."

* * *

Looking back, Micah decided that the first night was the hardest. Even with all of the shit she would have to go through in the future, only one other night ever came close to that first one. But's that a story for another day.

She managed to secure what she thought might have been a safe position in the rocky hills that surrounded Springvale, but the sound of gunfire in the distance drew her out and into the town proper. She wandered alone for Overseer knows how long, creeping along the ruins of houses that were inexplicably still standing after a full-on nuclear attack and two hundred years after that. But she didn't have the time to question the logic of the ruins, only that they provided safety - warm and beautiful.

Eventually, Micah was lucky enough to chance upon a house that its stairs mostly intact and she was able to climb up to the second floor, breaking a few steps under her weight along the way. She didn't know how she was going to get down without hurting herself, but that didn't matter. It was much easier to hit a target on the same level as you, she reasoned, than it was to hit someone that was above you - even if you did have rifles and a penchant for violence. So she was safe, for the moment at the very least.

With her basic need for security secured, Micah was able to focus on herself for the first time that day. It was long past sunset now and only the light of her Pip-Boy was bright enough to see by, but she used it sparingly. One could never know when a band of murderous mutants would happen upon you, and that was doubly likely when they could see you. So she turned the brightness all the way down, until she could just barely make out the figures on the screen. Memories of the long ago boogeyman in her closet crept up upon her, but she shook them off. There were real dangers out here.

Micah downed a box of Dandy Boy Apples and guzzled half a bottle of water from the medicine cabinet. It all tasted foul, and she couldn't tell whether the wasteland air had corrupted it or whether she had never taken the time to actually taste her food before before swallowing it. Smacking her lips together piggishly, her body instantly wanted to reach for another box of food, but her mind was smart enough to stop herself.

Her stomach growled and Micah realized that this was the fist time that she'd ever have to go hungry for a night. She began to cry wet, fat tears that splattered on the unstable floor beneath her.

It wasn't fair. Why couldn't it have been Freddie's dad who left the vault, or Christine's, or Sally's? Why did fate choose her? Her tears found their way to a crack in the floor and fell to the ground. In any normal circumstance, Amata would have been there to call her out on her self-pitying and disgusting behavior, but it took Micah a minute to realize that she'd never see Amata again - not ever.

That made her cry even harder. Was it right to leave her behind to be tortured? Something despicable and dark in the back of her mind told her so, but she couldn't trust that it was the right decision, even if it had saved her enough time to escape.

Her shoulder throbbed horribly, breaking Micah out of her misery. That's right. There was still the matter of giving herself proper medical attention. She sniffed loudly, trying to dry her tears long enough to make some sense of the situation. It didn't matter if she was hungry. The human body - especially one with as much fat as hers - could survive a decent amount of time without food. It didn't matter if she was thirsty because all she'd have to do was wait until the next rain, whenever that was. What really mattered to her at the moment was that her shoulder would get infected if she let it rot away like she was doing now, and she'd get blood poisoning, and die, and-and-and-

Micah bit her finger to keep herself from sobbing too loudly. That was it. She was going to die. That's all. Somehow, she understood it and on some level, she accepted it. There was no way that a little fat girl straight from the vault would be able to survive the big, bad irradiated wasteland. She wept openly now, and was too busy pitying herself to hear the soft creaking that came from the stairs.


End file.
